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SUBSCRIPTION 


IS5UCD 5EM1-WE 


^AlT^/JED AT, the \j POST DFr/C£.A/y> 
P5 SECOVD CLASS MP/L MATTES 
JUNE 3. ia0Q. 


/iso WORTH ST: 
COR N 3SION PI 



1 






Whose was the Hand? 


BY 

MISS m/e. BRApDON. 

\\ 






NEW YORK: 


JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY, 
142 TO 150 Worth Street. 




% 


Copyright, 1890, 

By John W. Lovell. 



Whose was the Hand? 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


CHAPl’ER I. 

DRAMATIS PERSONS. 

“ Wife/’ cried Robert Hatrel], coming into the sunny 
parlor where his wife and her daughter were sitting, the 
little girl in the broad recessed window, with her tutor, 
puzzling over her first French verb, a bed of pink tulips 
in front of the window waving and nodding their rosy lips 
in the soft April wind, “ wife, can you guess what good 
news I have brought you?” 

“ Indeed, no, Rob, unless it is that you are going to 
take me for a long drive to Burnham Beeches, or the 
Forest, for instance.” 

She was not one of the indifferent, off-hand wives, who 
hardly look up from their work or their book when a hus- 
band comes back from his morning walk. She was not 
even one of those excellent matrons whose affections are 
concentrated upon the nursery, for whom babies have a 
higher claim than the bread-winner. Clara Hatrell was 
fond of her husband, and was not ashamed to show her 
affection for him in those trivial ways which mark the line 
between love and toleration. She laid down her pen, rose 
from the little davenport, and went over to meet him as 
he came flushed and smiling into the sunshiny room. 

“ Better than that; ever so much better than that!” 

“Not another diamond bracelet, 1 hope,” she said, v/ith 
a touch of petulance. 

He had a passion for buying things, an amiable weakness 
which had been pleasant enough up to a certain point, but 
which Clara objected to when it passed the limits of com- 
mon sense. 

“ Ungrateful woman!” 


12 WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 

“ Yon know, dear, I have more jewelry already than 1 
care to wear. 

“ It is not a bracelet. It is not any kind of ornament 
for the most ungrateful of women. Will that satisfy 
you?’^ 

The little girl never looked up from the indicative mood; 
the glory of beginning a foreign language overcame her 
sense of weariness. The tutor never raised his eyelids from 
the eyes which watched the child puzzling over her book; 
but he was listening intently all the same. 

“ Not quite, Rob. You have been buying something. 
1 can see it in the sparkle of your eye. You have been 
wasting a heap of money upon some trumpery or other. 

“ 1 have not spent — or incurred a liability — to the ex- 
tent of three and sixpence since I left this house, but I 
have heard something which may lead to my spending 
three or four thousand pounds before we are much older. 

“The land!” cried Clara, clapping her hands. “My 
meadows, my gardens. ” 

“ Precisely. Young Floreslan has made up his mind to 
part with some superfluous territory; and as soon as the 
lawyers are ready to sell I shall be able to buy the extra 
acres for which my fair land-grabber has been pining.” 

“ What rapture! And 1 shall have an Italian garden — 
a real Italian garden — with marble balustrades, and Pan 
and Syrinx, and walls of cypress and yew, and a long 
avenue of junipers — ” 

“ My dearest dreamer, your cypress walls will take thirty 
or- forty years to arrive at perfection.” 

“ They will be something to look forward to in our old 
age, and we shall have the pleasure of planning everything, 
and watching the things grow. The garden will be our 
own creatioi], an emanation from our very selves. Adam 
and Eve would have taken more trouble to stay in Eden if 
it had not been ready-made.” 

Robert Hatrell had the sanguine temperament, and had 
a knack of adopting any idea of his wife^s with even 
greater enthusiasm than her own. He was never mor • 
pleased than in pleasing her — yet had marked tastes of 
his own — pictures, statues, foreign travel; a man of no pro- 
fession or pursuit, and of an energetic temper; energetic 
even to restlessness. 

He Was an only son, and had been lord of himself and of 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


13 


between three and four thousand a year at an age when 
most young men are still dependent upon parental benevo- 
lence. He had left Oxford without a degree, but with a 
reputation for considerable talent of an artistic, social, and 
generally intangible character; he had traveled and amused 
himself for half a dozen years, enjoying independence, 
health, and high spirits to the uttermost. He had had his 
adventures, his disillusions, and his disappointments dur- 
ing that long holiday; and he had only sobered and settled 
down oil marrying one of the jircttiest girls of her season, 
a girl fresh from a Buckinghamshire valley, where her peo- 
ple had been lords of the soil before the Wars of the Koses. 
She had practically no money, but she came of a race 
which claimed kindred with Hampden. She had the calm 
and chaste beauty of an Artemis by Praxiteles; she neither 
flirted nor talked slang; and she knew no more about rac- 
ing or cards than if she had been still in the nursery. In 
a word she was a girl whom Wordsworth or Milton would 
- have a(',cepted as the fairest type of English girlhood; and 
Eobert Hatrell considered himself a very lucky man in 
winning her for his wife. 

His father had been a civil engineer — a genius, success- 
ful ill all he touched. The rewards of his profession had 
been large and rapid, and had tempted him to overwork, 
which resulted eventually, after many notes of warning, 
in an appallingly sudden death. Eobert inherited with the 
engineer's fortune the engineer's ardent temperament, 
which, on his part, showed itself in superfluous energy, a 
feverish activity about trifles. There were times when, in 
spite of fortune, happy home, and idolized wife, he fell 
that he had made a mistake in his life, that it would have 
been better for him to have worked hard and had a career 
like his father’s. He read of the two Brunels, the two 
Stephen sons with a pang of regret. 

But on this bright April morning there was no shadow 
upon Eobert Hatrell's happiness; no sense of a purpose 
and a career missed; a life in somewise wasted. He talked 
of the additional land as if it were the beginning and end 
of existence. 

“ It will just make the place perfect, Clara," he said. 

You are always right, love-r-we were terribly cramped 
when we made our garden. The grounds are unworthy of 
the house." 


14 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


He opened a glass door and went out upon the lawn, his 
wife following him. They stood side by side and looked 
first at the house, and then at the garden, this way and 
that, and then at the river. 

Eleven years ago, on the eve of their marriage, he and 
Clara riding together one morning, between Heading and 
Henley, had discovered an old-fashioned cottage in a good- 
sized garden, with a lawn sloping to the river. There were 
a couple of meadows and an orchard behind the cottage, 
divided from it by a road, but the best part of the whole 
thing was this river frontage of less than a quarter of a 
mile. The cottage was to be let or sold, as a lop-sided 
board announced to the world at large, and the neglected 
garden gave evidence that it was a long time since the last 
tenant had departed and left the place to gradual decay. 
The lovers dismounted, and found a door on the latch, 
and explored the house, which was empty of human life; 
albeit some shabby furniture and a sandy cat in the kitchen 
indicated that a care-taker had her habitation on the 
premises. 

The thick walls, leaded casements, quaint old staircase 
and corridor fascinated Clara. She was passionately fond 
of the river and of the country in which she had been born 
and reared. Her future home was to be in Chester Street, 
Belgravia; but the exploration of the cottage suggested a 
delightful alternative. 

“ How sweet it would be to have this for a summer 
house, Hob,^^ she said, and Robert, who was at the period 
of his most abject slavery, instantly decided that the- cot- 
tage must be hers. The negotiation gave him something 
to do. Alterations and additions and improvements would 
make a delightful occupation for husband and wife after 
the lioneyTmoon. The house in Chester Street had been 
taken on a seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years^ lease; a 
most commonplace business. It was furnished and ready 
for them. Nothing more to do there. But this cottage 
would afford endless work. Pie began to plan at once, 
even before he knew the owner’s name. Of course they 
must build a drawing-room, and a couple of bedrooms over 
it. The present sitting-room would make a pretty hall by 
knocking down a lath-and-plaster partition, and throwing 
in the passage. Those thick walls and great chestnut 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


15 


beams were delightful. He saw his way to an artistic-look- 
ing house for very little money. 

“ I am nothing if not inventive/’ he said. “ Kemem- 
ber what my father did. Some faint trickle from that deep 
stream of ijitellectual foice ought to have come down to 
me.’’ 

“ I’m sure you would bo quite as clever as your father, 
and would plan viaducts and things as he did if it were re- 
quired of you,” said Clara, admiringly. 

The cottage was bought, and was the plaything of the 
first and second year of their married life; their chief 
amusement, occupation, and excitement. The cottage was 
always with them, and the greatest pleasure of their foreign 
wanderings was found in bric-a-brac shops, searching out 
strange and picturesque things for their new home. At 
the end of those two years the cottage was no longer a cot- 
tage, but a spacious and luxurious house, of moderate ele- 
vation, with many gables, a tiled roof, and tall chimney- 
stacks. The garden had been made as perfect as its narrow 
limits would allow; but everybody felt, and many people 
said, that the house was too large and too handsome for its 
surroundings. 

They had occupied* it for nine years, and the daughter 
who had entered it a year-old baby was old enough to learn 
her first French verb, although her education had been 
conducted in a very leisurely manner; yet only to-day had 
come the hope of possessing the adjoining land, which had 
been in the hands of trustees until two or three years ago, 
when the heir had come of age. 

The trustees had been unable to sell, and the heir had 
been unwilling to sell, but a winter on the Riviera had 
brought about a change of tactics, and this morning Mr. 
Hatrell had seen the land agent, and had been told that 
young Florestan would be glad of an offer for se much of 
the home farm as might be wanted to perfect Mr. Hatrell ’s 
holding. 

“ You will understand that as there is a river frontage, 
and the land is eminently adapted for building, we shall 
want a good price for it,” said the agent. 

“ Let me know your price without an hour’s unneces- 
sary delay. I’d rather not make an offer. I can’t be 
buyer and seller too,” answered Hatrell, and then he 
walked home at five miles an hour, brimming over with 


16 WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 

delight, triamphaiit at having such news to carry to his 
wife. 

They looked this way and that, and talked and pointed 
out boundaries and distances. Those dear old chestnuts 
must come down; the river terrace must be continued along 
there; the meadow would have to be leveled into an upper 
and lower lawn; and there must be stone balustrades and 
flights of steps. 

“ Tm afraid it will cost a fortune,^^ said Clara. 

“ We can afford to do it, dear, now we have given up 
the house in Chester Street.^’ 

They had discovered two or three years before that a 
London house was a useless expense — an incubus in some- 
wise, since it obliged them to live in town when they would 
rather be in the country. They both infinitely preferred 
life in Buckinghamshire to life in Belgravia, so on the 
expiry of the first term of the lease they gave up the house, 
and sold the bulk of the furniture to the incoming tenant. 
And now they could spend as much of their time as they 
liked in the house by the river, and could winter in Italy 
or Switzerland without any scruples of conscience. When 
they wanted to be in London there were hotels ready to re- 
ceive them, and the journey to the West End took very lit- 
tle more than an hour. 

The child had stuck to her book with dogged determina' 
tion while her mother and father were in-doors; but the 
sight of them standing on the lawn was too much for her. 
Their animated gestures filled her with curiosity. What 
were they pointing out to each other? What could they 
be talking about? 

Her tutor laid his long white fingers upon her shoulder, 
with the slow caressing touch she knew so well. 

“ Where are your thoughts flying, Daisy ?^^ he said, 
gently. “ We sha’n’t manage our two tenses if you donT 
attend better. 

“ Em rather tired, said the little girl, and 1 want to 
go to mother.^' 

“ Let it be one tense, then, only one; but it must be 
quite perfect. Shut your book, and tell me the French for 
‘lam.^^^ 

“ ‘ Je stiis/ ” replied Daisy, watching those sunlit fig- 
ures on the lawn — her mother in a gown of cream-white 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 17 

woolen stuff, with an orange-colored handkerchief knotted 
loosely round her neck. 

The tutor — tutor for love, not gain — never looked up. 
Dreamy at tlie best of times, he was in an unusually medi- 
tative mood this morning. He seemed to be giving a small 
portion of his brain-power to the child, while all the rest 
was lost in a labyrinth of thought. 

The present tense, indicative mood, of the verb “ Ure 
was repeated without a hitch. 

“ Good,^^ said Ambrose Arden; ‘‘ we will have the im- 
perfect tense to-morrow. And now you may run in the 
garden for half an hour, before we read our English his- 
tory. Perhaps you would like to read out-of-doors.^^ 

“ Very much, if you please. Uncle Ambrose.'’^ 

She put her arms round his neck, and laid her soft cheek 
against his silky hair. He had pale-auburn hair, which he 
wore rather long; his skin was as fair as a woman’s. Hair 
and complexion, and the clear bright blue of the large 
dreamy eyes, gave something of effeminacy to his appear- 
ance; but his features were large and boldly cut, a longish 
nose inclining to aquiline, a strong chin, and wide, reso- 
lute mouth. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but had 
the stoop of a bookish man, whose life was for the most 
part sedentary. All his movements were slow and deliber- 
ate, and his full, deep voice had slow and deliberate modu- 
lations — a legato movement that answered to the gliding 
movements of his figure. 

Daisy flew out to the lawn, like an arrow from a bow. 
She had her mother’s hazel eyes and vivacity, slim, straight, 
and swift as Atalanta, dark-brown hair flying in the wind. 
Ambrose Arden rose slowly and sauntered after her. 

“ May 1 inquire the cause of all this excitement?” he 
asked, as he approached husband and wife. 

“ Didn’t you hear just now, you man of ice?” Robert 
Hatrell exclaimed, laughingly. “ Can it be that mundane 
things have no interest for you, that you have only ears 
and mind for the abstract?” 

“ I heard something about Florestan’s land.” 

“ Precisely, Had you been more keenly interested in 
the welfare of your friends you might have heard that I 
have now the chance of getting the additional ground my 
poor Clara has been pining for ever since we made our 


18 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“ 1 am very glad/’ said Arden, quietly. 

“ You don’t look a bit glad,” said Clara. 

“ 1 am one of those cold-blooded people whose faces do 
not express what they feel. 1 am heartily glad, all the 
same — since you and Hatrell are glad.” 

“ Oh, it is Clara’s business. This place is Clara’s crea- 
tion. She can do what she likes with it,” said Hatrell. 
“ I’ll have Cruden over this afternoon to plan the new 
ground.” 

“ But, my dear Kob, is it worth while to begin our ^jlans 
before we are even sure of the ground?” remonstrated 
common sense in the person of his wife. 

“ We are quite sure. It is only a question of a hundred 
or two, more or less. Florestan wants money, and he can 
spare the laud; we want the land, and we can spare the 
money. There is always so much time lost in beginning 
anything. I’ll send for Cruden at once.” 

“ Yes, and you and Mr. Cruden will have planned every 
detail before I can make a single suggestion,” said Clara. 
“ I know your impekiosity of old.” 

“ My love, the new garden was your idea, and you shall 
carry it out in your own way,” replied her husband, “ but 
we may as well see Cruden’s plans. He is the best man in 
this part of the country for a job of that kind. We \^11 do 
nothing without your approval.” 

Clara gave a little impatient sigh. She knew so well 
for how’ little her approval would count when once the 
landscape gardener and his men were set at work; how lit- 
tle pause or leisure there would be for thought or taste, 
and how the whole business would be hurried along by her 
husband’s impatient temper till all was fixed and complet- 
ed — for good or ill. And she knew that the loveliest gar- 
dens she had seen had been the slow and gradual growth of 
care and thought. 

Mr. Cruden, however, was a prince among nurserymen. 
He had taste and knowledge, and many acres of nursery 
ground, and, if he were but allowed time, all would no 
doubt be well. 

Ambrose Arden strolled down to his favorite seat under 
a weeping- willow, which overhung the river and made a 
tent of tender green above a rustic bench and table. 
There were cushions scattered on the ground under the 
tree, and there was a doll sitting with its sawdust back 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


19 


propped up against the trunk. These and various lesson 
books indicated that the spot was Daisy's chosen resort. 
Here in fine weather she carried on her education, under 
the affectionate guidance of her father^s friend and neigh- 
bor, Ambrose Arden. 

When they bought their cottage at Laniford Mr. and 
Mrs. Hatrell found Mr. Arden established in a small, 
square brick house on the opposite side of the road, one of 
those ugly, useful houses which people used to build sev- 
enty or eighty years ago in lovely places, houses which 
imply that at a certain period of English history the sense 
of beauty was dead in the English mind. Such houses, as, 
square and as unbeautifnl, are built by the dozen nowadays 
on the outskirts of French provincial towns, and seem the 
natural outcome of the small bourgeois retired from busi- 
ness. Time and the mild, moist atmosphere of the Thames 
Valley had dealt kindly with this sordid building, and had 
covered it from basement to roof with roses, passion flower, 
woodbine, wistaria, and trumpet-ash. So clothed, and 
standing in the midst of an old-fashioned garden, it had 
assumed a certain humble prettiness, as the commonest 
laborer^’s cottage will, when it has time to ripen. It was 
quite good enough for Ambrose Arden, the Oxford scholar, 
the man who had carried^ off some of the chief prizes of a 
University career, but whose name, from a social point of 
view, had been written in water. Even the men of his 
year had scarcely heard of him, or at most had heard of 
him as a poor creature who neither rowed nor hunted, nor 
spoke at the Union nor gave wines; a creature who only 
sat in his college rooms and read. 

He came to the square brick house at Lamford a widower 
with one child, a boy of three years old. He had married 
a parson^s daughter out of a village among the Welsh hills, 
and had lived with her in that quiet, far-off world until 
their brief married life ended in sudden darkness. Her 
son was Just beginning to run alone, when the young moth- 
er, who had never given up the pious and charitable ways 
of the vicar’s daughter, took the contagion of a deadly fever 
by a sick-bed in a remote homestead, half hidden among 
the hills, too far for the elderly vicar to carry words of 
hupe and consolation. Ambrose Arden’s wife had taken 
the duty of visiting these people upon herself. The hus- 
band had an evil repute, was known to have ill-used his 


20 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


wife, and she was dying of some mysterious, consuming 
disease, alone and friendless. Amy Arden went daily to 
visit her, Ambrose walking with her, and while the wife 
read or talked to the sick woman, the husband sat on a lit- 
tle rustic bridge that spanned a trout stream hard by, read- 
ing the book he always carried in the pocket of his shoot- 
ing-coat. Never had Ambrose Arden been known to leave 
his bouse unsupplied with intellectual food of some kind. 

Whether the dying woman’s malady was contagious, or 
whether the house itself reeked with drain-poison the doc- 
tors never decided. All Ambrose knew was that his young 
wife fell a victim to her own large-hearted charity. From 
her childhood she had ministered to her father’s flock, and 
slie was stricken down in the path of duty. 

Mr. Arden left the rustic cottage in the Radnorshire vil- 
lage, in which he had liv^ed for three years in comfort and 
refinement upon a very small income, which he had in- 
herited from his mother. He was an only child, the last, 
as he supposed, of a race that had slowly exhausted itself; 
a race of gentlefolks who had neither toiled nor spun, and 
who had done very little to distinguish themselves in the 
busy places of this world. They were a Cheshire family, 
and they had lived on their own land and had seen their 
importance and their means gradually decaying generation 
after generation without being moved to any attempt to 
mend the fortunes of the house. Some of them had been 
soldiers, and some of them had been students, not undis- 
tinguished in the records of the University; but the active 
temper which can redeem the fortunes of a race had been 
unknown in the house of Arden. 

Ambrose fied from Radnorshire with a great horror of 
the soil on which he left the grave of his dead love. He 
had been very fond of his wife, not with a passionate or 
romantic attachment, but with a mild and in somewise fa- 
therly affection, appreciating the sweetness of a most per- 
fect character. She had never been more to him than a 
dear and tenderly loved friend, and his affection at the be- 
ginning of their married life had been as placid, temperate, 
and colorless as the love of gray-haired Darby for gray- 
haired Joan after their golden wedding. It did not seem 
within the capacities of the student’s nature to care pas- 
sionately for anything outside the world of thought. 

He went to London and lived in a lodging near the 


WHOSE was' the hand ? 


21 


British Museum for about half a year, while his iufaiit sou 
was eared for by a little stay-maker at Ivoehampton, who 
had about half a rood of garden ground behind her cot- 
tage. The boy throve well enough in this humble home, 
and Ambrose used to walk to Roehampton every Sunday 
to look at him. All his week-days he spent in the reading- 
room of the Museum. 

One day he discovered that his boy had grown very fond 
of him. He cried and clung to his father at parting, and 
then it first entered into the father’s mind that he might 
make a home for his son, and for his books, which had 
gradually accumulated since he had been in London, the 
temptations of the second-hand book-shops being irresisti- 
ble to a man for whom the world of books was almost the 
only world. 

The valley of the Thames was fairer and more familiar 
to the Oxonian than any other part of England. It was 
also within reach of the great reading-room; so it was on 
the banks of the Thames that Ambrose Arden looked for 
a home. He found a cottage and a good old garden for 
thirty pounds a year, and, as his prowlings about the lamp- 
lit streets within a one-mile radius of the Museum had made 
him familiar with a great many brokers’ shops, he had no 
difficulty in getting together the few articles of furniture 
necessary for the establishment of a widower with an in- 
fant son. A carpenter from Henley put up pitch-pine 
shelves for the student’s existing library, and provided 
space for future accumulations, and with his books and 
his son Ambrose Arden settled down to that dreamy life 
which he had now been leading for between eleven and 
twelve years. 

The Hatrells made their neighbor’s acquaintance casu- 
ally one summer evening on the river, where the student 
was sitting in a punt with his boy, the father absorbed in 
a book, the boy fishing, moored to the willowy bank, and 
where Robert Hatrell was sculling his wife slowly to- 
ward the suiiset, in his capacious wherry, the strong 
rhythmical stroke bearing witness to the time when he was 
one of the best oars in the University eight. The casual 
acquaintance soon ripened into an easy and familiar inter- 
course, and with the passing years of intimacy became 
friendship. The two men had been at Oxford together, 
albeit they had no memory of having ever met there. 


22 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


They had some tastes in common, although one was all 
energy, the other all repose. Mrs. Hatrell was a voracious 
reader, and looked to Mr. Arden for counsel and help in 
the choice of books. By the new lights which his wide 
knowledge of books afforded her she found many a pleas- 
ant short cut to a higher level of thought and culture than 
governess or professors had revealed to her. She grew to 
depend upon him for intellectual guidance, and it was with 
delight she accepted his offer to educate her only child 
after his own plan, 

“ It seems almost absurd to see you wasting your time 
upon that child, she said, feeling some compunction at 
the beginning of things. 

“ I have plenty of time to waste, and Daisy’s education 
will serve as amusement and laxation for me. Now that 
Cyril is at Oxford I have no young thing to lighten my life 
except Daisy.” 

“ But to see you teaching a child of seven seems rather 
like setting a Nasmyth hammer to crack a nut.” 

“ One of the boasted merits of the Nasmyth hammer is 
that it can crack a nut. Let me think that 1 have not 
lost the lightness and delicacy of a mind which can under- 
stand the workings of a child’s brain.” 

The mother submitted and was grateful, and it gradually 
became a familiar thing to see Ambrose Arden, the grave 
student of seven-and-thirty, whose magnum opus was to 
make a revolution in the philosophy of the world, bending 
over the brown-eyed child, and teaching her history upon 
his own plan, which was to begin in the valley of the 
Euphrates, and travel gradually downward through the 
ages, from the dim fairy-land of the East to the finished 
civilization of modern Europe. He had a genius for sim- 
plification, and contrived to make the broad outlines of 
ancient history clear and interesting even to that infant 
mind. He had traveled over all the same ground with his 
boy, Cyril, who was now distinguishing himself at Win- 
chester, whence he came nearly every saint’s day to see his 
father. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


23 


CHAPTER 11. 

CONFIDENCES. 

The moon rose at nine o'clock that evening, and Robert 
Ilatrell sauntered into the garden after dinner to smoke 
and meditate upon the projected improvements. With 
him action was everything, and reverie, however pleasant, 
rarely lasted long. To-night the meditative mood lasted 
no longer than a single cigarette. That finished, he opened 
a little gate in the kitchen garden, and strolled across the 
road, opened another little gate that admitted him into 
his neighbor’s garden, and went straight to the open win- 
dow of the shabby, square parlor which Ambrose had con- 
verted into a study by the simple process of lining it from 
floor to ceiling with books. A roomy old knee-hole desk 
occupied the center of the floor, and three chairs and an 
old-fashioned sofa comjileted the sum of the furniture. It 
looked a snug and congenial room for a student, shabby as 
it was, in the light of a shaded lamp by which Ambrose sat 
reading, unconscious that any one was looking in at him. 

“ Shut your dusty tome, old book- worm, and come for 
a stroll in the moonlight,” said Ilatrell, whereupon the 
student rose and obeyed him without a word, like a man 
of weaker will obeying one of stronger will. 

A cigarette was offered and taken, and then the two men 
walked along the road in silence broken only by a com- 
monplace remark or two about the weather and the night, 
until Robert Ilatrell said abruptly: 

“ Are you sure it was the same man?” 

“The man you have described to me? Assuredly it 
was. What other man should know your story?” 

“ No, perhaps not. I doubt if there is any one else who 
would know. ” 

“ The whole matter is easy enough to understand. This 
man is one of many, all on the verge of starvation, refugees 
of the Commune, who have been dragging out a miserable 
existence in London since last May — nearly a year. I, 
who am a Republican and a Nihilist in theory, have sym- 
pathies with these men who have tried to reduce theory to 
practice. So I whipped up a few pounds, your fiver 
among others, and took the money to a public-house in 


24 WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 

Greek Street, where my friends assemble of an evening, 
and distributed it among them, in accordance with their 
necessities. In the course of conversation 1 happened to 
mention your name, and the man followed me into the 
street afterward and questioned me about you. 1 natu- 
rally refused to answer questions which 1 considered imper- 
tinent, and then he told me his story. 

‘ And of course made the worst of it?^^ 

“He told it in a vindictive spirit.^’ 

“And you think perhaps that 1 ought to have acted, 
differently, that Claude Morel, the chemist’s assistant, 
ought at this moment to be my brother-iinlaw?” 

“ My dear Hatrell, a man’s relations with women are 
just the one part of his life which no other man has the 
right to question, and in which counsel and opinion are 
worse than useless.” 

“There’s no answer,” exclaimed Hatrell, impatiently. 
“ Why don’t you say at once that I ought to have married 
a milliner’s apprentice and had that man for my brother- 
in-law!” 

“ He would not have been a very agreeable connection, 
I admit, in practice, although in theory all men are equal. 
There are plenty of men of as low a grade socially whom 
I would accept as my friend and equal to-morrow — but 
not Claude Morel. The fellow bears the brand of Cain 
upon his forehead. It was men of his stamp who made 
the Commune what it was. He was one of their speakers, 
the intellectual element, the force that set other men’s 
brains on fire. I was sorry to see great hulking, honest 
fellows under his influence. I could read the history of 
last year’s riot and murder in that little room in Soho. A 
very dangerous man, your Claude Morel.” 

“Yet you think he ought to have been my brother-in- 
law,” said Hatrell, slashing at the flowery bank with his 
stick, harping irritably on the same question. 

“ Ho, no, no! Since you were not so far entangled with 
the sister as to — ” 

“ But I was entangled. I loved her, man. Yes, I was 
over head and ears in love with that milliner’s apprentice, 
and had more than l^lf a mind to fling prudence to the 
winds and marry her. She was very young, very confid- 
ing, and altogether innocent. Yes, p, grisette in Paris, 
and innocent. God knows how long that would last. She 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


25 


had left her native village less than a year before I met 
her; had traveled to Paris to find her brother, who had ap- 
prenticed her to a milliner in the Rue Neuve des Petits 
Champs. We met by purest accident in a street crowd; 
she hustled and frightened in the mob. I happened to 
protect her. I walked home with her, ever so far — be- 
yond the Bastile — and so began an acquaintance which 
might have ended — God knows how — if that young man 
had not tried to force the running. I have to thank his 
violence, not my prudence, for my escape, and for my 
sweet English wife. 1 shudder to think of the difference 
such a marriage as that must have made in my life.’’ 

“ That depends upon the strength of your love,” said 
Arden. “ I can imagine a man loving so deeply and truly 
as never to regret having married beneath him. ” 

“ No, Arden; repentance must come. It is the after- 
taste of passion, and a gentleman’s love for a peasant girl 
can be only passion at best.” 

“ That depends upon the gentleman.” 

“ Ah, _you are in your provoking mood to-night, I see. 
Did this fellow tell you what has become of his sister — 
whether she is dead or living?” 

“ No, he went into no particulars, nor did I encourage 
him by asking questions. He talked of broken promises, 
broken hearts, a blighted life, pride, and cruelty — talked 
as you may suppose a Communist, nurtured upon Le Pere 
Duchesne, would talk of an English gentleman who had, 
in his idea, compromised and disappointed his sister. Mere 
rhodomantade, like his speeches. I cut him as short as I 
possibly could, only I considered it my duty to let you 
know that the man is in London, and that he threatens to 
hunt you out and revenge his sister’s wrongs — her sup- 
posed wrongs, we will say— in some way or other. ” 

“ That means lying in wait for me at the corner of a 
London street to shoot me or throw vitriol in my face, 1 
suppose,” said Hatrell, with a scornful laugh. “ 1 must 
take my chance of the bullet or the vitriol.” 

“ It may be only an empty threat, but 1 own I don’t 
like the man’s physiognomy or his history, and 1 recom- 
mend you to be on your guard. It might be wise to try 
and get him out of the country. I dare say he would emi- 
grate to one of the colonies if emigration were made profit- 
able to him.” 


26 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“ Arden, do you think 1 am such a poltroon as to buy 
my life from a foreign bully? He threatened me in Paris, 
and I turned him out of my room neck and crop. He 
wanted to frighten me into a marriage with his sister by 
pretending to believe that I was her seducer. But that was 
not the worst. When I told him that marriage was impos- 
sible he insinuated that there might be other arrangements. 
A rich young Englishman in love with a girl of inferior 
station might make sucli a settlement as would insure the 
comfort and respectability of her future life without the 
legal tie. In a word, the man was, and is, a scoundrel. 
He knew that I was rich, and he wanted to make a 
market out of me. Don’t you know that chantage 
is a profession in Paris; a profession to which profligates 
and idlers look as the one easy way to competence? And 
he found that I was not a singing-bird. Whatever debt I 
owed to my little Toinette, it was not one that he could 
force me to pay. And do 3'ou suppose that now, fourteen 
years after, I would reward his bluster with the concession 
of so much as a sixpence? If you do think so poorly of 
me, Arden, you must be a very bad judge of human iiat^ 
ure. ” 

“ Perhaps I am wrong, but I have your wife to think of 
as well as you. What if this man were to come here and 
tell his story — ” 

“ To my wife? Let him. She will believe no man’s 
word against mine. Indeed, I have talked to her about An- 
toinette, or at least 1 have told her half in sport and half 
in earnest that I was once in love with a French grisette ; 
and I am not afraid to tell her the truth, that in my salad 
days, two years before I saw her fair young face, I was very 
hard hit by that same grisette, and trifled with her longer 
than I ought, and had even half a mind to marry her, and 
only pulled myself up sharp when her brute of a brother 
interfered. I need not tell her I sent the girl a hundred 
pounds in my farewell letter, and wished her a good hus- 
band in her own rank of life who would respect her all the 
more for that dot, and for the knowledge that I could sign 
myself in. all sincerity and honor her respectful friend. 
Ah, Ambrose Arden, you who have given your heart to 
books can never imagine how this foolish heart of mine 
ached as I wrote that letter.” 

“ I own that I have lived more among books than among 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


27 


human beings, yet 1 can just conceive the possibility of an 
overmastering love bearing down all barriers, weighing 
caste and circumstance as feathers in the scale against pas- 
sion. But what I can not conceive is that such intense 
feeling can be transient, that such a love can ever give 
place to another. 

“ Ab, but you see I do not pretend that my fancy for 
Antoinette was ever a grande pasf>ion. My heart ached at 
throwing her off, but the heartache came as much from 
my sympathy with her in her disappointment as from my 
own sense of loss. I was never really and tremendously in 
love till 1 met Clara. 

“ She accepted your hundred pounds, I suppose?” 

“ 1 hope so. It never came back to me; but as I re- 
ceived no acknowledgment from my poor little friend it is 
likely enough her brother intercepted my money and her 
letter, counseled her to refuse the gift indignantly, perhaps, 
and then put my bank-notes in his pocket. 1 believe Mon- 
sieur Morel to bo capable of anything sneaking and infa- 
mous.” 

“ And you never heard of Antoinette after that letter?” 

“ Never. 1 left Paris the next day. The city seemed 
dull and dark without the light of those southern eyes. It 
was in autumn, the dead season, and I went off to Peters- 
burg, and thence to Odessa to look at my father’s work 
there, and to feel sorry I was not so good a man as he. 
The air has turned chilly. Will you come in and play a 
rubber?” 

” With pleasure.” 

They turned and went back to Kiver Lawn. They went 
in by the hall door into that roomy low-ceiled hall which 
had formed the whole basement of the original cottage, 
and which was a triumph of engineering skill on Mr. Hat- 
rell’s part. Ponderous cherry-wood beams supported the 
ceiling, which was further sustained by two oak pillars 
carved in a bold and vigorous style of art, which looked as 
if it had been done under the Heptarchy. A procession of 
short-nosed Druids and Saxon kings, with Boadicea, in her 
chariot, leading the way, encircled those stunted pillars in 
a diagonal line, and many an erudite person had expatiated 
upon their antique preciousness until silenced by Robert 
Ilatrell’s uproarious laughter. 

To-night in the shine of the lamps the hall glowed with 


28 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


the vivid hues of Italian stripes and Persian looking-glass 
embroidery, and through the open door the large airy draw- 
ing-room revealed its more delicate coloring and cool sea- 
green draperies, touched- with faint flushes of rose. Mother 
and daughter were sitting at a small round table, with the 
light of a reading-lamp concentrated upon their bright, 
eager faces, as they arranged the pieces of a large puzzle 
map, the child intensely eager to forestall her mother. 

“ Oh, mother, youVe put India next to Russia— one so 
hot and the other so cold. That canT be right, and yet 
the pieces fit,’^ said Daisy. 

The round Chippendale card-table was set ready at a re- 
spectful distance from the fire. Two shaded lamps shed 
their mild radiance upon the cards and the markers. The 
rubber was a nightly institution, and there were few even- 
ings upon which Ambrose Arden did not come in to take 
his part in the game, he and Mrs. Hatrell playing against 
the master of the house, who liked no partner at whist so 
well as dummy. Clara and her partner were in perfect 
sympathy in their loathing of cards, and therefore they 
both played an unimpassioned, ineffectual, and often inat- 
tentive game, which left Robert Hatrell master of the situ- 
alion. He played with a fervor and vigor which would 
have carried a bill through the House, or silenced an 
enemy’s fort, and he enjoyed the eager, rapid hour’s play 
with an enjoyment which was exhilarating to his com- 
panions, and then the hour having ended in triumph on 
his part, and the complete humiliation of his opponents, 
he would rise from the table, exultant and beaming, and 
pace up and down the room talking as few men can talk, 
with a rush of eloquence even about small things. 

When the three players had taken their seats Daisy came 
to say good-night, having stayed up till half past nine — a 
prodigious indulgence. 

She kissed her mother and father, and then went to Mr. 
Arden, and put her arms round his neck and kissed him 
almost as fondly as she had kissed the other two. He de- 
tained her for a minute or so while Hatrell was dealing for 
the always favored dummy. ^ 

“ Shall we have the imperfect tense to-morrow, Daisy?” 

“ Yes, 1 nearly know it now. I shall quite know it to- 
morrow.” 

“ And to-morrow will be to-day 5 and even these kisses 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


29 


of yours will be in the imperfect tense, wonH they, pet, 
things that have been. God bless mother^s treasure. 
Good-night!’^ 

He said the words almost reverently, with a touch of 
deeper solemnity than is usually given to fatherly good- 
nights. Robert Hatrell had not even looked up from the 
cards when his child kissed him. 

It was a pretty domestic picture in the cheerful light of 
lamps and fire. The three figures at the table so calm, so 
reposeful, with such passionless countenances, the child ^s 
vivid face moving amid them, looking with bright, rapid 
glances from one to the other. Family affection, un- 
clouded peace, unquestioning love, could hardly be more 
perfectly expressed than they were that night in Robert 
HatrelFs drawing-room. 


CHAPTER 111. 

BEFORE THE CORONER. 

In the “Evening Standard of Wednesday, July 7, 
1872, appeared the following: 

Mysterious Disappearance. — Much anxiety is being 
felt by the family and friends of Mr. Robert Hatrell, of 
River Lawn, Lamford, near Henley, who has been missing 
since last Monday afternoon. He left the Union Bank, 
Cockspur Street, at three o’clock that day, in company 
with a friend, intending to walk to Lincoln’s Inn Fields; 
but he was accosted in Cranbourne Street by a middle-aged 
woman of genteel appearance, whom he accompanied in 
the direction of Greek Street, after taking leave of his 
friend. He had in his possession a parcel of Bank of Eng- 
land notes to the amount of some thousands, and it is 
greatly feared that he has been made away with on ac- 
count of this money. The police have been on the alert 
since yesterday morning, but up to a late hour last night 
no discovery had been made. 

The following notice appeared in the “ Times” on 
July 8th: 

Dreadful Murder in Denmark Street, Blooms- 
bury. — The mystery of Mr. Hatrell’ s disappearance has 


30 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


been solved, and the worst fears of his family and friends 
are- only too fatally realized. On the 30th ult., a foreigner, 
of respectable ai)pearance, representing himself as a jour- 
neyman watchmaker, employed at Mr. Walker’s, Cornhill, 
took a second-floor back bedroom at No. 49 JDejimark 
Street, paying a week’s rent in advance. lie appeared 
to be a person of orderly and sober habits. He was out-of- 
doors all day, and went in and out morning and evening wit h- 
out attracting any notice from his fellow-lodgers. He wailed 
upon himself, and always locked his door before going out; 
there was therefore no curiosity excited by the fact that the 
room remained closed during the whole of last Tuesday, 
and although no one had seen the lodger in question it was 
supposed that he had gone out at the usual hour in the 
morning and let himself in at the usual hour in the even- 
ing. The house was in the occupation of three diflerent 
families — the first floor being occupied by a working 
tailor, and the front room used as a workshop for three 
or four men. The foreigner, who gave the name of Saqui, 
and represented himself as a French Swiss, from the de- 
partment of the Jura, had been accommodated witli a latch- 
key. It was only at six o’clock yesterday morning, when the 
landlady knocked at the door of the second-floor back, with 
the intention of asking her lodger to leave his room open 
in order that she might clean it during his absence, that 
suspicion was first aroused. His hour for leaving the 
house was supposed to be about seven, and not being able 
to obtain any reply at six, she coiicluded that he had been 
out all night, and proceeded to inquire of the other lodgers 
when he had been last seen, she herself not having seen 
him since Monday morning — when he passed her in the 
passage at a quarter past seven on his way out. No one 
remembered having seen him or heard any movement in 
his room since Monday afternoon, when one of the men in 
the tailor’s workshop had seen him pass the open door on 
his way down-stairs. Suspicion being now aroused the 
door was broken open, and a terrible spectacle met the 
view of those who entered the room. A man was found 
lying on the floor, stabbed through the heart. The body 
was surrounded by the bed-clothing, which had been 
stripped off the bed and spread about the murdered man 
so as to absorb the blood that flowed from the wound. 
Death must have been instantaneous. An empty bottle 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


31 


labeled “ Chloroform/’ and a sponge which still retained 
a faint odor of that drug, suggested that the victim had 
been made helpless and unconscious before the death-blow 
was struck. The deceased was a man of powerful build, 
whom few antagonists would have cared to attack single- 
handed. His pockets had been rifled, but his clothing was 
not otherwise disturbed, and identification followed almost 
immediately upon the tidings of the murder being conveyed 
to Scotland Yard. 

Mr. Hatrell had drawn a considerable sum of money out 
of the bank, and was on his way to his lawyers in LincoliTs 
Jnn Fields, to complete the purchase of an estate at the 
time he was decoyed to Denmark Street. 

The police are actively engaged in the pursuit of the 
murderer, and are said to be already in possession of an 
important clew. A reward of five hundred j^ounds has 
been offered by the family of the deceased. 

Extracts from the report of the inquest, published in 
the “ Times” of the following day, July 9th: 

Colonel MacDonald stated that he was an intimate 
friend of the deceased, and that he had lunched wiLh him 
at the Army and Navy Club on Monday, the 5th instant. 
Deceased was in particularly high spirits during luncheon, 
being much elated at the prospect of passing into imme- 
diate possession of a small estate adjoining his own grounds 
on the banks of the Thames. The estate was under ten 
acres, but the situation of the land was exceptional, and the 
amount to be paid for it was large — close upon four thou- 
sand pounds. He, Colonel MacDonald, could not remem- 
ber the exact sum. 

After luncheon he offered to accompany the deceased to 
the bank, where he was to cash a check for the purchase 
money, and from the bank — the West End branch of the 
Union Bank of London, in Cockspur Street — he offered to 
walk with him to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the deceased being 
somewhat in advance of the hour named for the interview 
with the vender’s solicitors. He and the deceased had 
been at Eton together, and he was, he believed, one of Mr. 
Hatrell’s oldest and most intimate friends. They were in 
the habit of meeting frequently in London, and he had 
often visited Mr. Hatrell at his house in Buckinghamshire, 


32 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


Coroner: Were you with the deceased at the counter of 
the bank when he cashed his check? 

Col. MacDonald: I was standing at his elbow at the 
time. 

Did you observe where he put the notes? 

He put them into a Russia-leather note-case, which he 
placed in his breast-pocket. He was wearing a frock coat. 
I advised him to button his coat, more in jest than in 
earnest, as I considered the money perfectly safe where ho 
had placed it. 

When you left the bank v/ith him did you observe any 
suspicious-looking person hanging about upon either side 
of the street? Had you any reason to suppose that your 
friend was watched? 

Not the slightest — no more than if he had come out of a 
baker’s shop after buying a penny bun. But I do not 
mean to state as a fact that there was no one lurking about 
or watching him. The idea of such a probability iiever 
entered into my mind. There was nothing out of the 
common in two men going in and coming out of a bank. 
The fact of his carrying some thousands could only be 
known to any one from previous information. 

Did anything occur on your way to Cranbourne Street 
to suggest the notion that you were being followed? 

Nothing. But if we had been followed the fact would, 
in all probability, have been unnoticed by either of us. 
We were enagegd in conversation the whole time, and we 
were passing through a busy part of London. Nothing 
happened to my knowledge out of the common way until 
we entered Cranbourne Street, where a middle-aged woman, 
of respectable appearance, approached my friend, and 
spoke to him in French. He stopped to answer her, and I 
drew a little way off while they were talking. 

Did you hear much of their conversation? 

Very little. 1 was standing with my back to them, 
looking into a print shop. I am not much good at the 
French language, and they were speaking French all the 
time. 

Was it a long conversation? 

It seemed longish to me. I was waiting for my friend, 
and had very little to engage my attention. 1 don’t sup- 
pose the conversation really lasted ten minutes. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


33 


You must have overheard something. You know some 
French, I suppose 

I overheard enough to know that the woman was talk- 
ing of some person who was very ill, in a dying state, as 1 
understood, and who wanted to see Hatrell. The woman 
seemed to I5e pleading for this dying person. 1 heard the 
name Antoinette repeated two or three times in the course 
of the conversation. Hatrell walked a few paces further 
with me after this, leaving the French woman waiting for 
him. He told me that he felt himself obliged to go with 
this woman to see some one— an old acquaintance. The 
visit would be a matter of less than an hour, as the house 
was not far off; and in the meantime he wanted me to go 
on to the solicitors in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, to explain his 
unavoidable delay, and to assure them that he would be 
with them half an hour after the appointment, which was 
for four o’clock. “ I shall take a hansom as soon as I 
have — seen this person,” he said. “ It is an urgent case 
— sickness — destitution.” I reminded him of the large 
sum of money on his person, and asked him if the woman 
was known to him. He told me that she was — indirectly. 
She was nearly related to the person he was going to see, 
who was an old acquaintance. “You don’t suppose I’m 
going to be decoyed and murdered?” he said, laughing; 
and, upon my word, with his magnificent physique and 
perfect vigor of health and manhood, he seemed about the 
last man whom any one would try to decoy, in the heart of 
London and in broad daylight. The idea seemed as pre- 
posterous to me as it did to him. He told me I could carry 
the money to the solicitors myself if I liked, an offer which 
I laughingly declined; and so we parted. 

Hid you see the direction in which he went away? 

Yes. I turned to watch him and his companion. They 
went into Cranbourne Alley. 

This was the last you saw of them? 

Yes. There was one thing which I observed on my way 
toward Chancery Lane, which, it has since occurred to me, 
might have some bearing upon my poor friend’s fate. As 
I passed a small Italian coffee-house a few doors from the 
spot at which Hatrell and I parted, I noticed a man stand- 
ing in the door- way, looking down the street in the direc- 
tion of Cranbourne Alley, and it seemed to me, on after 
consideration, that he was standing there for a purpose, on 


34 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


the watch for some traiisaclioii in the street. He had a 
more intent look than a casual idler would have had. 1 
crossed the road almost immediately after I observed this 
man, and I dawdled a little on my way to St. Martin’s 
Lane, looking in at one or two shops. As I waited at the 
corner with my face toward Longacre, a hansom passed 
close by me, and 1 recognized the man being driven in it as 
the same man 1 had seen at the door of the cafe. 

Should you know the man if you were to see him again? 

Tm afraid not. It was the expression of his face that 
struck me — not the face itself. lie had a keen, eager 
look, like a man in a desperate hurry. The cabman was 
driving very fast, the wheel almost grazed me as the cab 
shot round the corner. 

In what direction was the cab going? 

Toward St. Giles’ Church. 

That would be in the direction of 'Denmark Street, 
would it not? 

Yes. It is the way to Denmark Street. I walked over 
the ground this morning. 

The witness appeared deeply affected, but gave his evi- 
dence in a straightforward and business-like manner. 

You had known the deceased from boyhood, you say. 
Did you know anything in the history of his life calculated 
to throw any light upon his reasons for accompanying this 
foreign woman to Denmark Street? 

Nothing. 

You have never heard of his having relations with a per- 
son called Antoinette? 

No. I never heard of any one by that name. But I 
have heard him speak of a girl in Paris with whom he was 
in love two or three years before his marriage. 

Do you suppose there was an intrigue between him and 
that girl? 

I think not. He spoke of her quite frankly, and on one 
occasion in the presence of his wife, to whom he was most 
devoted. I remember that upon that occasion his romantic 
passion for the French woman was joked about by husband 
and wife. I do not for a moment believe in any dishonor- 
able connection in his past life. 

But yoiTthink that Antoinette may have been the name 
of the^irl he admired? 

1 think it very likely. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 35 

xVnd that the name was used as a lure to get him to tne 
house ill Denmark Street? 

I have no doubt that it was so. 

When did you first hear of his disappearance? 

Early the following day, when I received a telegram 
from his wife, asking for information about him. Mrs. 
Ilatrell knew that her husband was to lunch with me on 
Monday, and naturally applied to me when first she took 
alarm. 

A member of the firm of solicitors in Lincoln's Inn 
Fields gave evidence as to the appointment made by the 
deceased for the payment of the purchase money, three 
thousand eight hundred and sixty-five pounds, and the ex- 
ecution of the conveyance. This witness described the 
arrival of Colonel MacDonald with the message from the de- 
ceased, and the surprise that was felt at Mr. llatrelTs non- 
arrival, it beijig known to the firm that he was a man of 
punctual business-like habits, and particularly anxious to 
pass into possession of the property in question. 

The bank clerk who cashed Mr. Hatrell’s check, de- 
posed to the amounts and numbers of the notes, and stated 
that the police were already in possession of these numbers, 
and on the alert to discover any attempt that might be 
made to dispose of the notes either in England or on the 
Continent. 

Mrs. Moore, the landlady of the house in Denmark 
Street, described the appearance and characteristics of the 
foreigner who engaged her second-floor back bedroom on 
the Thursday preceding the murder. 

“ He was a very civil-spoken man. He looked quite the 
gentleman. He spoke English like a foreigner, and I believe 
he was a Frenchman. His way of talk was quite different 
from a German gentleman, in the tailoring, who occupies 
my first floor. I should certainly have put him down as a 
Frenchman, and he told me he was a French Swiss, from 
the neighborhood of Heufchatel, and that he worked for 
Mr. Walker, of Cornhill. I couldn’t have wished for a 
more respectable lodger. He offered me a week’s rent in 
advance as he was a stranger, and 1 did not hesitate about 
taking him. ” 

There was nothing repulsive in his appearance, noUiing 
that set you against him? 


36 


WHOSE WAS THE HAKD ? 


Nothiug. He told me that he should want no attend- 
ance, as he was used to waiting upon himself. If he 
wanted a cup of tea he would take the tea-pot down to my 
back kitchen — I don't burn any fire in the front room in 
summer-time — and would boil up my kettle. All he would 
want would be for me to clean up his room once or twice a 
week. 

Did he bring any luggage? 

Ojily one small portmanteau. The police have taken 
that away. It was opened in my presence, and there was 
nothing in it except an old pair of trousers, a brush and 
comb, and three empty bottles that had held chloroform. 

Were you at home on the day of the murder? 

Yes, I was in-doors all that day. 

Yet you did not see or hear the deceased come into the 
house? 

I was in my back kitchen most of the day doing my 
weekly wash. 

Could you not hear people go in or out of the street door 
when you were in the back kitchen? 

Y"es, I could hear them going along the passage and up- 
stairs, but I wasn't likely to take notice of who went out 
or came in. The men from the tailor’s workshop used to 
go in and out and up and down at all hours. There are 
other lodgers in the attics, and an old lady and gentleman 
in the parlors. I might have noticed a stranger's step, 
perhaps, if I had been on the listen, for I knew the foot- 
steps of most of the lodgers; but I was very busy with my 
wash, and I didn't take much notice. 

What was the state of the room when you and Mr. 
Schmidt broke open the door? 

The deceased was lying on his back, stabbed through the 
heart. There was a chair lying on the ground beside the 
bed as if it had been knocked over in a struggle. The bed 
curtain was drawn. A counterpane and blanket had been 
dragged off the bed and placed round the deceased so as to 
sop up the blood, and the knife was sticking in the wound. 

Was there anything to indicate that the murderer's 
clothes or hands were bloody when he left the room — any 
smears upon the door, or traces of bloody foot-prints on the 
floor? 

There wasn't a sign of anything of that kind. The 
police examined the room. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


37 


Where did you find the sponge? 

About three yards from where the body was lying. 

Should you know your lodger if you were to see him 
again? 

I could swear to him anywhere. 

John Smallman, journeyman tailor, deposed to having 
seen the Frenchman go down-stairs some time on Monday 
afternoon. He took notice of the fact as on Friday and 
Saturday the man had been out all day — and was supposed 
to be in constant employment in the watch-making trade. 
He laughed and told one of his mates that the Frenchman 
had been keeping St. Monday. He could not say the pre- 
cise time at which he had seen the man pass the landing, 
but he knew that it was some time after four, and that the 
church clock hard by had not struck five. He generally 
went out for his tea when St. Giles’ Church clock struck 
five. 

Did you notice anything peculiar about the appearance 
of the man as he passed the landing? 

No. He walked with a bit of a swagger, and he was 
whistling softly to himself as he went down-stairs. He was 
whistling that tune French people are so uncommon fond of. 

The Marseillaise, perhaps, you mean? 

No. It was the other tune — Young Dunoy. 

Partant pour la Syrie 9 

Yes, that was it. 

Had you or any of your mates struck up an intimacy 
with this Frenchman — had you got into conversation with 
him upon any occasion? 

Not us. He was a very close party, and seemed to think 
himself a good bit above the rest of the lodgers. He’d 
only been in the house a few days before the murder. 

Did none of you see him after that Monday afternoon? 

None of us. I don’t believe he ever entered the house 
after he left it that time. 

A cabman, who had come forward of his own accord, 
deposed to having driven a man from Oranbourne Street 
to the corner of Denmark Street about four o’clock on the 
afternoon of the murder. The man hailed him from the 
pavement in front of an Italian coffee-shop. He told him 
to drive as fust as he could go and he should have double 


38 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


fare. He did drive fast, getting over the distance in about 
five minutes, and the man gave him a florin. He got out 
at the corner of the street nearest the church. Witness 
stopped to see where he went, and he saw him enter a 
house on the right-hand side of the street, which he had 
since identified as the house where the murder was commit- 
ted. Witness believed that he would be able to recognize 
the man in question. He was a dark-complexioned man, 
between thirty and forty, ralher a good-looking man, and 
he looked like a foreigner, French or Italian, most likely 
Italian. 

There were other witnesses examined, and the inquest 
was adjourned for a week, the usual order being given for 
the burial of the deceased in accordance with the desire of 
his friends. 

The adjourned inquiry evolved very little additional in- 
formation. Much of the original evidence was repeated, 
but no new facts had been discovered relative to the mur- 
derer, except Mr. Walker^s repudiation of any knowledge 
of such a man’s existence. No man of that name had ever 
been employed in Mr. Walker’s workshop in Cornhill. The 
police had up to this time totally failed in their efforts to 
trace either the missing man or the missing notes. The 
murder not having been discovered until a day and a half 
after it had been dojie, the murderer had had ample time 
to cross the Channel before the police were on his track. 
He would probably endeavor to dispose of the notes in Hol- 
land or in Germany, and perhaps leave Germany for 
America. The London police were in communication with 
their brotherhood on the Continent, and all suspicious de- 
partures from Havre, Marseilles, Antwerp, Hamburg, 
Bremen, or any of the principal ports would be noted. 
The large reward which had been offered by the widow of 
the deceased was calculated to stimulate the energies of 
Scotland Yard; but the efforts of Scotland Y^ard resulted 
only in the following up of various false scents, all alike 
leading to disappointment and disgust. 

The one scent, which if it could have been followed while 
it was warm, would have led to the apprehension of the 
murderer, was a lost scent, because the lapse of time had 
made it cold before the Scotland Yard hounds could be 
laid on. 


WHOSTi: WAS THE HAND ? 


39 


Ten days after the murder there came communications 
from the Credit Lyonnais at Nice, from the Credit Lyon- 
nais at Cannes, and from Mr. Smith's bank at Monte 
Carlo, wliich disposed of the question as to what had become 
of the money which should have been paid for young 
Squire Florestan's river meadows, the bundle of notes 
whiclr Eobert Hatrell had pocketed so gayly that summer 
afternoon after his cheery luncheon at the Army and Navy 
Club. 

In the morning of July 7th, an elderly woman had called 
at the Credit Lyonnais at Cannes to exchange two notes of 
five hundred pounds each for French money. She was a 
person of lady-like appearance, spoke French with a 
Parisian accent, and impressed the cashier as a personage 
to whom the utmost respect was due. She was very par- 
ticular in exacting the fullest rate of exchange for her 
thousand pounds, and seemed- to take a miserly delight in 
the trifling profit made on the transaction. She informed 
the cashier, en passant, that she had hired a villa in the 
Quartier de Californie, and that she required the greater 
part of this money to pay the season's rent in advance. 
She added also, en passant, that the people of Cannes 
were usurious in their insistence upon payment beforehand 
from a tenant whose integrity and whose means it was im- 
possible to doubt. This was said with an air of quiet dig- 
nity which confirmed the cashier in his idea that he was 
dealing with a personage. 

These details were communicated later in confidential 
talk with the detective who followed up the clew; the main 
fact telegraphed to Scotland Yard was the fact that such^ 
and such notes had been turned into French money. 

From Monte Carlo came an account of a larger transac- 
tion. An elderly lady of aristocratic appearance had called 
at the English bank there late on the afternoon of July 
7th, and had changed three Bank of England notes, for 
five hundred pounds each, taking in exchange French notes, 
twent 3 "-franc pieces, and those large gold pieces of a hun- 
dred francs, which make so fine a display in a rouleau on 
a irente et quarante table. Here, as at Cannes, the cashier 
had been impressed by the lady's distinction of manner and 
perfect savoir fair e. The easy way in which she handled 
a five-hundred pound note indicated long experience of 
wealth. A gambler evidently, thought the cashier, but a 


40 


WHOSE WAS THE HAJ^ D ? 


woman rich enough to afford to gamble without any 
sordid anxiety as to the result; a person whose presence did 
lionor to the delightful little settlement on the rock. 

From Nice came a third telegram. Elderly woman ex- 
change two notes, such and such numbers as advertised, 
for five hundred pounds each, and one also numbers as ad- 
vertised, for two hundred and fifty pounds, on July 9th, at 
eleven o^clock a.m., at the Credit Lyonnais. 

A letter following the above telegram informed the 
authorities of Scotland Yard that the elderly woman in 
question was of distinguished appearance, speaking French 
perfectly, and supposed by the cashier to be a French 
woman. She had alleged as her reason for changing the 
notes that she had bought a plot of land at Beaulieu, with 
the intention of building a villa there, and she preferred to 
pay for it in French money. The seller was an ignorant 
man, who seemed never to have seen a Bank of England 
note; and there was also the advantage upon the exchange. 
Again, as at Cannes, the distinguished elderly lady showed 
herself eager for the utmost profit upon the exchange. 

The money taken from the murdered man was thus ac- 
counted for — within a hundred and fifteen pounds. The 
odd money being in smaller notes, might easily be disposed 
of without leaving any trace in the memory of the people 
who received it. There could be very little doubt that the 
elderly lady of Cannes was identical with the elderly lady 
of Nice and Monte Carlo. Her description as given by 
the three cashiers tallied in every particular, esjiecially in 
the trifling detail of a rather noticeable mole just above 
•the outer corner of the left eyebrow, and in another detail 
as to the lady’s hands, which were remarkable for their 
whiteness and delicacy of form — hands which had gone a 
long way toward suggesting the idea of the lady’s patrician 
birth and refined breeding to the minds of the three 
cashiers. 

One of the cleverest detectives in London charged him- 
self with the task of following the trail of this nameless 
lady, taking up the thread at Nice after a quarter past 
eleven upon the 8th of July, which was the time of her 
latest recorded appearance. 

It needed a good deal of close work in the way of inquiry 
at nearly every hotel in the city to discover that an elderly 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


41 


French woman of good appearance spent the night of the 
7Lh of July at the Hotel des Princes, that she arrived by 
the late train from Monte Carlo, that her only luggage 
consisted of a hand-bag, neither large nor heavy, that she 
went out soon after ten o’clock on the morning of the 8th, 
lunched in her own room at twelve, and left the hotel at 
half past twelve in a cab, which was called for her at the 
door, carrying her bag with her, after duly paying her bill. 
Neither porter nor waiter had observed the number of the 
cab, nor had any one heard her direction to the driver. It 
was supposed she was going to the railway station, and the 
hour at which she left suggested that she was going in the 
Kapide which leaves Ventimille at six minutes past eleven 
for Paris. As the aforesaid Rapide stops at nearly every 
station between Nice and Marseilles, the lady’s range of 
country — as to choice of where she should alight — would be 
wide; but there was a general idea that any person so ill- 
advised as to leave Nice was hardly likely to stop till he or 
she came to Paris. Between Nice and Paris there was 
practically nothing — a wide area of orange-trees, sea -shore, 
and mountain-chain — an insignificant watering-place or 
two — Cannes, St. Raphael — a ship-building settlement — 
and a sea* port — but for pleasure, for gayety, for movement, 
for the lovers of opera, play-houses, and little horses, abso- 
lutely nothing. 

The intelligent detective visited Monte Carlo and saw the 
cashier at Mr. Smith’s bank. He went into the rooms 
and talked to the attendants. He met an acquaintance or 
two, also on business; but he could find out nothing more 
about the elderly lady. 

He went to Cannes, and put the Cannes cashier through 
a kind of Socratic dialogue in the way of close questioning, 
but could get no more than has been already told. A 
liouse-to-house visitation of the hotels resulted in the dis- 
covery that an elderly French woman, traveling alone, had 
descended at the Hotel de France at half past seven 
o’clock in the morning of the 7th, arriving doubtless by 
the train which leaves Marseilles an hour after midnight. 
She had breakfasted alone in her room, had gone out be- 
fore eleven, had lunched and paid her bill, and left the 
hotel in a cab a little before two o’clock in the afternoon. 

There was nothing to show where the woman had gone 
when she left Nice. Inquiries at the station there had been 


42 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 

without result of any kind. Whether she had turned her 
face toward the Italian frontier — or whether she had gone 
by Marseilles to Paris — or had stopped at Marseilles — or 
had turned westward and crept by slow trains down to 
Biarritz or Bordeaux — there was no power which could help 
the intelligent gentleman from Scotland Yard to discover. 
She was gone. From her appearance at the Hotel de France 
at Cannes to her disappearance from the Hotel des Princes 
at Nice she had been alone. No mortal had been seen to 
hold converse with her — whosesoever accomplice she might 
be she had been trusted to carry out her mission uncon- 
trolled and unwatched. 

“ The bond between her and the murderer must be very 
tight/’ mused the detective, “ or he would never trust her 
with the whole of his plunder. It’s my belief that she has 
gone to Paris, and tliat he was to meet her in Paris; but 
how to look for a man of whose antecedents 1 know noth- 
ing, and of whose appearance I know only the vague im- 
pressions of three or four people who all describe him 
dihereutly, is a problem beyond my intellectual powers.” 

He thought it worth his while, nevertheless, to spend 
the best part of a week in Paris, and in professional circles 
where, if ingenuity and long experience of criminal ways 
and windings could have helped him to a clew, he might 
have obtained one; but no clew was to be found. The 
Ariadne to thread this labyrinth was not yet discovered. 

All the detective’s researches among doubtful characters 
and the places which they are known to haunt, all his long 
hours of patient hanging about at railway stations, in cel- 
lars where they make music, at bars where they drink 
mysterious liquors called by eccentric and alarming names, 
and in this suspected quarter and in that, were but fruit- 
less labor. He could see nothing and he could hear noth- 
ing of any man answering to the description of the man 
who had announced himself as a Hwiss watchmaker at the 
Denmark Street lodging-house. 

The detective pursued his researches at Havre, but he 
could obtain no trace of any such person lately embarked 
on one of the numerous American and other steamers 
which leave that port. Such a man might have sailed un- 
noted, as there was nothing distinctive in the description 
of the murderer to mark him out from the common herd 
of superior mechanics. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


43 


“ It^s hard lines for a man to let such a chance slip 
through his fingers,*' the detective said to himself, “ but 1 
don't believe any man will ever grow rich out of the re- 
ward for the discovery of Mr. Hatrell’s murderer. The 
job was too neatly done, and the people in it were too 
clever." 


CHAPTER IV. 

HOW WOULD SHE BEAR IT? 

The public interest in the Denmark Street murder 
gradually diminished, and finally expired before summer 
leaves were withered and dead, dying for want of nutri- 
ment. The crime had made a profound sensation, first 
because the victim was a man of means and position, and 
above all a man of unblemished character. Next, because 
it was a shock to society in general to discover that a man 
of undoubted courage and powerful physique could be as- 
sassinated in broad daylight, in a decent London street, 
amid the going and coming of respectable working people, 
and that his murderer could escape unchallenged with his 
plunder. 

There were a good many leading articles in the news- 
papers upon the subject of Robert Hatred's untimely fate. 
The Denmark Street mystery was served up to the British 
public, which gloats over all such mysteries, with every 
variety of journalistic sauce, and the British public were 
told, as they had been very often told before, that they 
were living in a corrupt and degenerate age, that such 
crimes as the Denmark Street murder were the natural 
outcome of luxurious habits in the upper middle classes, 
and unspeakable corruption in the aristocracy, a depth of 
degradation under a veneer of refinement, whereby was 
naturally fostered and developed the criminal instinct of 
the masses. The British public was informed that a wave 
of crime was passing over England, and that a savage lust 
of blood and gold was in the air; and the British public was 
furthermore called upon to take warning by these mon- 
strous developments of our nineteenth-century civilization, 
and in a general way to mend its manners. 

These voices crying in the wilderness of London life the 
British public heard with but a languid interest. The one 
fact that did interest them, after the natural curiosity as 


44 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


to the why and the how of Robert HatrelFs death, was the 
fact that London was not altogether a place devoid of 
danger to human life even in broad daylight, that a man 
might at any unguarded moment be lured within four 
walls and stabbed to death. There were those who argued 
that there must have been some dark spot in Mr. HatrelLs 
history, or he would not so readily have followed an un- 
known messenger on the strength of a woman^s name. 
There must have been something in the dead man’s rela- 
tions with the woman called Antoinette, which made it a 
matter of life and death to him to go wherever she sum- 
moned him. Otherwise, bearing in mind that he was on 
his way to an important business appointment, and that he 
had four thousand pounds in his breast-pocket, it must 
needs seem strange that he should be so easily turned aside. 

So argued Society, shaking its head sagely at dinner- 
tables, where men and women’s natural interest in the 
tragedy of human life sometimes gets the better of that 
good taste which would exclude such subjects of conversa- 
tion from refined assemblies. 

Summer was gone, and it was late autumn, and the out- 
side world had forgotten Robert Hatrell — had forgotten 
him just when his widow was waking from a long, dull 
dream of agony to the reality of her irreparable loss. 

The woods along the valley of the Thames were clothed 
in russet and gold, and Olieveden’s glades were strewn with 
fallen leaves. The mists of autumn rose in the early even- 
ing, pale and phantom-like, along the river meadows, and 
the tramp of the horses on the tow-path and the ripple of 
the water against the sides of the barge had a ghostly 
sound in the obscure grayness, through which boat and 
horses came slowly, as if moving in secret under the veil of 
night. 

it was a mild and lovely day at the beginning of Octo- 
ber when Clara Hatrell left the house for the first time 
since her husband’s funeral on the 11th of July. She had 
insisted on following him to his grave in Lamford Church- 
yard, and she had borjie herself with extraordinary forti- 
tude throughout the funeral service, had stood by the grave 
till the last ceremony had been performed, the wreath of 
summer flowers laid in its place, and then she had gone 
quietly back to the house where the happiest years of her 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


45 


married life had been spent. 8he had gone to her room 
without a word, save one gentle murmur of thanks to the 
sister who had been at her side on that trying day. Her 
sister followed her upstairs, heard her lock the door of her 
room, and after listening outside for some minutes went 
down to the drawing-room where the clergyman of the 
parish, the family lawyer, and Ambrose Arden were assem- 
bled. 

“ I don’t know what to do about Clara,” she said, anx- 
iously; “ she has locked herself in her room, and 1 don’t 
feel that it is right to leave her alone. Yet I don’t like to 
force myself upon her. One can not tell what to do for 
the best; it may be better perhaps that she should be alone 
with her grief. ” 

“ Mrs. Hatrell is a woman of deep religious feeling,” 
said the priest, “she will not be alone. She has borne 
up wonderfully this day. The same Power will be with 
her in the solitude of her room. It might be well to 
leave her alone for an hour or two, Mrs. Talbot. After 
a period of solitary prayer she will be glad of the comfort 
of your sisterly affection.” 

“ Yes, 1 think you are right. 1 will leave her to herself 
for a time, poor dear thing. ” 

Mrs. Talbot was an elder sister, who had married six 
years before Clara made her dehut in society. She had 
married a rising physician who had now risen to the fash- 
ionable level, and was one of the most popular doctors at 
the West End of London. Mrs. Talbot had a nursery 
and a school-room to look after, and a widely compre- 
hensive visiting-list, beginning with duchesses and dwindling 
down to struggling young women in the musical, literary, 
and dramatic line. She had an exacting, albeit a kind and 
generous husband; and she had so much to do and to think 
about at home that she had not been able to devote any 
considerable part of her life to her sister’s society. She 
came now in this hour of mysterious and overwhelming 
calamity as an act of duty; but she was not altogether in 
sympathy with the household at Kiver Lawn, had not alto- 
gether grasped the full measure of love which had ruled 
between husband and wife, and thus could not fathom the 
depth of the widow’s sorrow. She had comforted a good 
many widows in her time, and her general experience had 
been that, however they might distress their friends by the 


46 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


intensity of their grief during the first half of the first year 
of widowhood, they generally took their friends by surprise 
by their rapid reco\rery in the second half. 

Dr. Talbot was one of the British public who opined that 
there was something more than met the eye of the coroner 
or the coroner’s jury in the relations of his deceased 
brother-in-law and the person called Antoinette. Ques- 
tioned searchingly by his wife on the subject of his suspi- 
cions, he replied that the case was obvious enough to any 
one who could read between the lines; and with this occult 
phrase Mrs. Talbot was constrained to content herself. 

There was no family assemblage to which Robert Hat- 
rell’s will had to be read. He had stood almost alone in 
the world, without any relation nearer than second cousins. 
The second cousins expected nothing from him, had made 
no sign since his death except in the way of letters of con- 
dolence to the window. 

“ My unfortunate client made his will immediately after 
his marriage — or 1 should rather say that he executed his 
will after his marriage— -for the will was drawn up at the 
same time as the marriage settlement,” explained Mr. 
Melladew, the family solicitor. “ He leaves the bulk of 
his estate in trust for his wife for her life, with succession 
to his children share and share alike. As there is only one 
child, she will inherit all at her mother’s death. The will 
gives the trustees power to anticipate some portion of the 
estate, with Mrs. Hatrell’s consent, for tlie marriage set- 
tlement of any son or daughter. By a codicil made in the 
beginning of the last year Mr. Hatrell leaves his house and 
the land appertaining to it to his wife, absolutely, with 
power to purchase conterminous land to the amount of 
ten thousand pounds out of the corpus of the estate.” 

“ He always hankered after Florestan’s land, poor fel- 
low,’^ said the parson. “ Strange that he should have met 
his death on the very day when he was to complete the 
purchase of the adjoining meadows. The will leaves Mrs. 
Hatrell free to make the addition? That is a fortunate 
circumstance.” 

“Fortunate,” exclaimed the lawyer. “Do you think 
she will find it in her heart to remain in a place so asso- 
ciated with her husband?” 

“ I hope she will not leave my parish. There are peo- 
ple who fiy from a spot where they have been happy with 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


47 


those who have been taken from them, but there are 
others who cling fondly to the scene of a vanished love. 
If I am any judge of character, Mrs. Hatrell belongs to the 
latter type, and she will remain in the home sanctified by 
an ideal wedlock.^' 

“ I believe you are right, Mr. Eeardon,^^ said Ambrose 
Arden, in his calm, slow tones, looking up from a volume 
which he had taken as if mechanically from the table near 
his elbow, “ 1 believe Mrs. Ilatrelks gentle and adhesive 
nature will find comfort in familiar things — after a time. 
I should be very sorry if it were otherwise. I should be 
very sorry to lose so kind a neighbor, and, above all, to 
lose my dear little friend and pupil, Daisy. 

“ Poor little Daisy,’’ sighed he priest; “ what a blessed 
thing that she is too young to know the extent of her loss, 
or the manner of her father’s death.” 

“ That she must never know,” said Arden, firmly. 

Mr. Reardon looked doubtful. 

“ Do you think this terrible story can be hidden from 
her always?” he asked. “I fear not. She may be kept 
in ignorance of the truth while she is a child under her 
mother’s eye, but when she advances to girlhood and mixes 
with other girls — when she goes to school — ” 

“ She will not go to school,” interrupted Arden, “ an} 
one would be mad to expose her to the tittle-tattle and folly 
of a pack of school-girls. I wonder you can suggest such 
a thing, vicar.” 

“ Well, we will say there shall be no school in her case. 
Though for an only child that means a lonely, self-con- 
tained, and not overhealthy girlhood. But the time will 
come when she must mix with other people, and go about 
in the world, at home and abroad. Do you think no offi- 
cious acquaintance will ever be indiscreet enough to talk to 
her, in pure sympathy, about her father’s death — taking it 
for granted that she knows all that can be known about 
it?” 

“ That is a long way tc look ahead,” said Arden; “ I 
hope she will grow up a light-hearted, happy girl, her mind 
so well furnished, her memory so full of interesting things, 
that should the evil you apprehend ever come to pass she 
may be strong enough to bear the shock. In the meantime 
1 trust that all her friends in this place, from the highest 
to the lowest, will do their best to keep her in ignorance of 


48 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


everything — except the one fact that she has lost a good 
and affectionate father/^ 

While this conversation was going on in the drawing- 
room Mrs. Talbot was strolling about the garden to get rid 
of time, in accordance with Mr. Reardon^s suggestion that 
it would be well to leave the mourner to herself for an 
hour or so. The lawn and river, the flowers and shrubs 
were in the perfection of their summer beauty: clumps of 
roses, hedges of roses, standard roses, dwarf roses, blush 
roses, climbing roses, made the glory of the long, narrow 
lawn, and between the lawn and the river there was an Ital- 
ian terrace with yews and junipers planted at regular in- 
tervals, and great green tubs containing orange-trees in the 
intermediate spaces. There was a flight of stone steps 
leading to the river at each end of the terrace, and at the 
western end, with its back to the setting sun, there was a 
summer-house of classic form, in Portland stone, a sum- 
mer-house which in Italy would have been marble. At the 
eastern end of the terrace, and on a lower level, there was 
a capacious boat-house, containing a couple of outriggers, 
a punt, and a wherry, and the level roof of this boat-house 
had been a favorite lounging- place of Robert Hatrell and 
his friends — a place on which to smoke and talk in the 
summer twilight, as the pleasure-boats went by to Henley. 

Mrs. Talbot had seen her husband and the dead man sit- 
ting there in close confldential talk of a summer evening 
after dinner, while she and her sister strolled up and down 
the terrace, or stopped to feed the white stately swans and 
their soft gray cygnets. She almost fancied she could hear 
the mellow sound of Robert Hatrell's laughter as she 
walked there now, with her back to the boat-house. What 
a joyous, frank, expansive nature. What a happy life, 
wanting nothing that this world can give of comfort and 
delight; strength, intellect, good looks, fortune, perfect 
health, and a wife who adored him. And he had been 
stabbed to death in a shabby London lodging by an un- 
known hand. It was only a fortnight ago that Sarah Tal- 
bot and her husband had been dining at River Lawn. 
They had gone down to dine and sleep in the very flush of 
midsummer, just to smell the roses, just for a few hours^ 
respite from London gayeties and London smoke, as Clara 
had expressed it in her letter of invitation. There had 
been only the vicar and Mr. Arden to meet them, the two 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


49 


men now in the drawing-room with the lawyer. They had 
been a most sociable party, full of talk, Hatrell expatiating 
upon his plans for the arrangement of the land which was 
so soon to be his, and even in higher spirits than usual. 

There had not been a cloud in the horizon; and Mrs. 
Talbot, who loved Harley Street and all her London pleas- 
ures, had for once in her life gone back to town reluctantly. 

“ It is curious that Robert and Clara can live like her- 
mits in the height of the season,^^ she told her husband. 
“ But really this morning, when we were leaving, I almost 
envied them their quiet domestic life in that lovely place. ” 

And now the bond of married life was broken, and joy 
was gone like a dream when one awaketh. 

Mrs. Talbot was pacing slowly along the terrace de- 
pressed by these thoughts, when a long shrill shriek rang 
out upon the summer air; such a cry of agony as her ears 
had never heard until that hour. The sound came from 
the open window of her sister’s bedroom, the large bow- 
window, which was one of Robert Hatrell’s numerous im- 
provements. She rushed into the house and ran upstairs, 
but quick as she was Ambrose Arden and the vicar were 
there before her, and the former was in the act of breaking 
open the door as she reached the landing. 

He had implored Mrs. Hatrell to open the door, and 
there had been no answer, so he put his shoulders against 
the paneling and wrenched the door off its hinges. 

Clara Hatrell was sitting on the floor in the middle of 
the room with a heap of her husband’s letters — her lover’s 
letters, for they had all been written before marriage — scat- 
tered about her. She sat with her hands clasped upon her 
knees, her eyes fixed, and staring into vacancy. Her di- 
sheveled hair fell about her shoulders in a wild confusion, 
as if her hands had been clutching and tearing at it. 
Emily Talbot knelt down by her and spoke to her, trying 
to soothe her, gathering up the long hair with gentle hands, 
pressing tenderest kisses upon her burning forehead, but 
she took no notice, her eyes remained fixed in that ghastly 
sightless gaze, her fingers were still locked together in the 
same convulsive grasp. 

“ She is mad,” cried Mrs. Talbot, horrified at that 
awful look, which made her sister’s face like the face of a 
stranger; “ mad, quite mad.” 


50 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


i^'or more than six weeks after the funeral Clara Hatrell 
lived in the darkness of a distraught brain. More than once 
during that period she hovered on the brink of the grave, 
and there were dismal hours in which her doctor and her 
nurse lost all hope. Life and reason were alike in peril, 
and there was many a night when Ambrose Arden sat in 
his study trying to read, but never able to leave off listen- 
ing for the footfall that might bring him fatal tidings. 
During this season of fear he had rarely went to his bed- 
room till the sun had risen above the long level meadows 
toward Henley Bridge, and often the sunrise found him 
walking in the lane between his cottage and River Lawn. 
It was the dreariest time of his life since the short, sharp 
agony of his young wife^s illness and death. He had noth- 
ing to distract his mind from the one anxious subject 
which absorbed him. His little pupil had been carried off 
by her aunt, and was at Westgate-on-Sea with a bevy of 
cousins, all older than herself. His son’s vacation was 
being spent with the good old grandfather in Radnorshire. 
He had planned the visit at the beginning of Mrs. Hatrell’s 
illness. The lad’s company would have been irksome to 
him in this time of fear. He preferred to be alone to face 
the awful foreshadowing of a fatal issue. No one could 
have helped him to bear his agony, the agony of fear for 
the life of the woman whom he had loved in patient sub- 
jugation — in such perfect mastery of himself as never to 
have awakened suspicion in those among whom he lived his 
every-day life — ever since he first looked upon her fair 
young face. 

No one had ever guessed his secret; not the husband 
whose fiery temper would have been quick to kindle into 
flame, had there been but the lightest cause for jealousy; 
not the wife, whose purity would have been quick to take 
alarm at a word or a look; not the friends who lived in 
intimate relations with the family; no one had guessed. 
Yes, one perhaps had divined his secret. One pair of 
clear, candid eyes had read his heart. Once in a moment 
of expansion his pupil and playfellow clasped her arms 
round his neck and murmured in his ear, “ I lov^you, 
because you love mother, ” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


51 


CHAPTER V. 

DAISY^S DIARY SEVEN YEARS AFTER. 

Cyril says he thinks I could write a novel. I have read 
so many stories, so much poetry, and I am such a fanci- 
ful imaginative creature, he tells me. I hope that isiiT 
another way of saying that I am silly and affected. One 
never quite knows what a University man means. Under- 
graduates seem to have a language of their own, made up 
of satire and contempt for other people. Cyril is such a 
curious young man; he always seems to mean a great deal 
more than he says. At any rate, he has said ever so many 
times this summer that I ought to be able to write a novel. 
How I wish I could. How delightful it must be to invent 
people that seem alive, to live in their lives and in their 
adventures, to move all over the world in a beautiful day- 
dream, not dim and confused and blurred and blotted with 
absurdities as night-dreams are, but clear and vivid with 
the light that never was on land or sea. 

1 only wish Cyril were right; but, alas! he is wrong. I 
have tried ever so many times. I have begun story after 
story, and have torn up my manuscript after the second or 
third chapter. My heroine seemed so foolish and so feeble, 
there was no life in her. She was like those dear dolls 1 
loved so, that never would sit up, not even against the 
wall. She was every bit as limp. My hero vVas better, but 
Um rather afraid he was too much like Rochester in “Jane 
Eyre where he wasn’t the very image of Guy Livingston. 
What men those were. Guy was nicer — he would have 
shown off best at a dinner party or a ball. Mr. Rochester 
comes nearer one’s heart. How I could have loved him 
'after he went blind. Happy Jane — to be so miserable, 
nearly starved to death, and then to have her own true love 
after all. 

No, I’m afraid I shall never write a novel. There is 
something wanting. Invention, I suppose. But I am 
very fond of writing, so I have made up my mind to write 
my own life. My adventures would hardly fill a chapter 
— not if I began at my cradle. I never went to a hard 
and cruel school like Jane Eyre. I never knew what it 


b2 


WHOSE WAS THE HAKD ? 


was to be hungry, except after a long walk, and then it 
was only a pleasant hunger, with the knowledge that five- 
o^’clock tea and hot buns and thin bread and butter were 
waiting for me at home. No, 1 have no vicissitudes to 
write about; but I can write about those 1 love, my im- 
pressions of people and scenery, and books and animals. 

How big a volume 1 could fill upon one subject alone if 
I were to write about mother and all her goodness to me, 
and the happy years I have spent with her for my chief 
companion. It seems only yesterday that 1 was a child 
and she used to play with me at all sorts of games, just as 
if she were another little girl. 1 fancied she was enjoying 
herself just as much as I was. 8he would play at visiting, 
and dinners even, than which I can not imagine anything 
more wearisome to a grown-up person. To pretend to eat 
a grand dinner olf little painted wooden dishes, with curi- 
ous puce-colored joints and poultry, and pink and green 
tarts and puddings glued on to them, and to make conver- 
sation and pretend to think everything nice, and to ask for 
a second help of a wooden leg of mutton. How dreadfully 
bored she must have been; but she endured it all like a 
martyr. 

We used to play battledore and shuttlecock on the tennis 
lawn for hours at a stretch. She could run faster than I 
till a year or two ago. She says now that those battledore 
contests kept her young. Every one says how young and 
girlish she looks, more like my elder sister than my moth- 
er. Indeed, strangers generally take her to be my sister. 

How pretty she is — pretty is too insignificant a word. 
She is beautiful. I know no one with such a lovely com- 
plexion-clear and pale, with a rosy fiush that lights up 
her face suddenly when she is animated. Her large hazel 
eyes are the loveliest I ever saw. They have so much light 
in them, and her smiles are like warm summer sunshine. 

But I must begin the story of my life in those days when 
I was just old enough to understand all that was going on 
round about me, and to be sOrry when those I loved were 
sorry, and that will bring me only too soon to the saddest 
part of all my life, the time when my father was taken 
from us. 

Let me try and recall him vividly in this book while I 
am still able to remember him exactly as he was, so that 
when I am old and memory grows dim I may find his im- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


53 


age here, as one finds a rose in a book, dry and dead, but 
with its beauty and color and velvet' texture still remain- 
ing. 

What a splendid-looking man he was; not like Guy Liv- 
ingston, or like Edward Fairfax Rochester. There was 
nothing dark or rugged or repulsive about my dear father, 
and, indeed, although oneks heart always goes out to a 
swarthy repulsive man in the pages of a novel, 1 donT 
know whether one would take quite so kindly to Brian de 
Bois Gilbert, or even to Rochester in real life. My father 
was like David, of a pleasant countenance, ruddy and fair 
to see. 1 can bring his face and figure before me like a 
vision when 1 shut my eyes in the sunshine and fancy him 
walking across the lawn to meet me, with the blue of the 
river behind him, as I used to see him so often in the hap- 
py days before I went to Harley Street. 

He was tall and broad-shouldered, upright, with an easy 
walk. He took long steps as he came across the grass 
swinging his oak stick, the stick he used in his long tramps 
to Henley or Reading, or across the fields and woods to 
some out-of-the-way village. He was almost always out-of- 
doors in summer — alone, or with mother, oftenest with 
mother — walking, driving, rowing, playing tennis. 

He was not too old for tennis. Yes, th^ere is the bright 
frank face, and the smiling blue eyes — honest English eyes. 
His portrait, in the library, and his photographs may help 
to keep his features clearly in my memory, but it seems to 
me as if I never could have forgotten him even if there had 
been no portrait of him in existence. It is hardly a ques- 
tion of memory. His. face lives in my heart and mind. 

He was fond of me. One of my earliest recollections is 
of lying at the end of the punt among a heap of soft cush- 
ions, while my father walked up and down with the long 
heavy punt-pole, and moved the great clumsy boat over 
the bright blue water, sometimes turning into a quiet back- 
water, where he would moor his boat, and sit and smoke 
his pipe in the sunshine, and talk to me in a slow, dreamy 
way between the puffs of tobacco, or let me talk to him. 
Oh, how I used to chatter in my little shrill voice, and 
what questions I used to ask him, question after question,' 
and how puzzled he used to look sometimes at my everlast- 
ing ‘‘ why,’^ and my everlasting “ what.'’^ Why did the 
sun shine, or why did the river make the boat move, or 


54 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


what were the flowers made of? Dearest father, how 
patient he was with me! He used to laugh off my ques- 
tions. He never explained things, or taught me the names 
of the flowers like Uncle Ambrose. Our life together was 
a perpetual holiday. He taught me how to fish for dace 
and minnows out of the stern of (he boat, and I was very 
happy with him. It all seems like a dream of happiness 
now as 1 look back upon it, but as distinct as the most 
vivid dream from which one has only just awakened. 

Sometimes these happy mornings were Sunday morn- 
ings, when mother was at church. If Sunday happened to 
be a very warm day, father would begin to yawn at break- 
fast-time, and would say he did not feel inclined for church, 
and would go on the water with Daisy; and then I used to 
clap my hands and rush off to get my sun-bonnet, and be- 
fore mother had time to make any objection we were off to 
the boat-house to get the pole and the cushions. When 
the church-bells began to ring from the old red tower we 
were gliding ever so far up the river, on the way to our 
favorite backwater, where father used to sit and read his 
Sunday papers, while I worried the little happy dancing 
fish under the willows. 

Silvery darting creatures, swift as light! How glad 1 
am now that 1 caught so few of them. 

Yes, he was very good to me. He used to talk of days 
when 1 should be grown up, and when he would take me 
to parties and balls. “ Your mother and 1 are saving our- 
selves up for your first season, Daisy, he said; “ that’s 
why we are living like hermits.” 

Yes, he was good, and I loved him dearly; but perhaps 
1 loved Ambrose Arden almost as well, only in another 
way. 

1 don’t think any little girl of seven was ever so honored 
as to have a man of vast learning to teach her to read and 
write, unless it was some little princess in the days when a 
man like Fenelon was not thought too good to be a prince’s 
tutor. Uncle Ambrose taught me from the very begin- 
ning. It was his whim and fancy to do so. He is a man 
of such laborious habits that he takes no account of trouble, 
and in all the years he has labored at my education I can 
nevfer remember one impatient word, or even one impatient 
movement on his part. I have lost patience often, I, the 
learner— he, the teacher, never. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


55 


1 can just remember how 1 came to call him Uncle Am- 
brose. I used to call him Mr. Arden — Misser Arden, at 
least, for it was before I could spe5,k plainly. One day he 
told me not to call him Mr., it was too formal between 
him and. me. “ Call me Ambrose,’^ he said, and then 
mother looked up from her work and said that would 
never do. A little girl could not address a man of his 
years and learning by his Christian name. 

“ 1 am not quite so elderly as I seem,^^ he said, laugh- 
ing, “ but if you think Ambrose won’t do, let me be an 
imaginary uncle, and let her call me Uncle Ambrose. Will 
that do?” 

“Yes,” said mother, “that will do very well.” So 
from that time forward he was Uncle Ambrose, and he is 
Uncle Ambrose to this day, just as kind, and good, and 
devoted as he was when I was a little girl, with bare arms, 
short petticoats, and a sun-bonnet. He still occupies him- 
self about my education, although he is a much more dis- 
tinguished person than when he began the task. He has 
published three different books since then, books of the 
very highest literary character, which have made him a 
reputation among the learned and the refined in England 
and on the Continent. Reviewers have written about him 
in several languages, his success has been undisputed, his 
name is quoted with Darwin, and Spencer, and Max Miil- 
ler. In a word he is a famous man; and yet he is content 
to go drudging on at the task of educating a frivolous girl 
like me. We are reading Duruy’s “ Histoire des Grecs ” 
together this summer, and with it we are reading Grote’s 
“ Plato ” and Jowett’s magnificent translation. The lit- 
tle Greek that I know helps me to appreciate the beauty 
and grace of the English rendering. I should like to kiss 
the hand that wrote that noble book. 

* Hs * * * * * 

How suddenly, how awfully that happy life with my fa- 
ther came to an end. I remember that summer morning 
when he left us soon after breakfast to go to London and 
complete the purchase of Mr. Florestan’s land. We break- 
fasted in the garden, in an open tent on the lawn, and we 
were all so happy. Father talked of nothing but the land 
and the new garden which was to be laid out immediately. 
The ground had all been laid out already on paper. The 
plans were in the library on father’s writing-table— draw- 


56 


WHOSE WAS THE HA HD ? 


iiigs of terraces and balustrades, vases and statues lightly 
sketched in with that beautiful touch which makes almost 
any house charming before it is built. Everybody had seen 
the plans and had talked about them, and argued and ad- 
vised, and my dear father had talked them all down with 
his grand ideas of an Italian garden. LTncle Ambrose 
quoted Lord Bacon’s essay on gardens. I remembered the 
very words a year ago when 1 began to read Bacon, ddiey 
came back to me like the memory of a dream. I was only 
a child, but I used to sit and listen to everything that was 
said, and think and wonder. 

Father kissed me at the gate before he got into the 
T-cart that was to take him to the station. Tliank God 
for that kiss. He looked back at mother and me as he 
drove away. He looked round at us with his beautiful 
smile, and called out, gayly, “ I shall bring the title-deeds 
home for you to look at.” 

He had asked mother to meet him at the station in the 
evening. She was to drive her ponies, and she was to take 
me with her if she liked. On those long summer days I 
used to sit up till nine o’clock, and I used to sit with moth- 
er and father while they dined. My aunt Talbot protested 
sometimes against what she called overindulgence, and said 
I was being sj)oiled, and should grow up old-fashioned. I 
don’t know about the spoiling, but perhaps I did grow old- 
fashioned. I could not have been mother’s companion in 
all those happy years if I had not been fond of many things 
that my cousins don’t care for. 

We went to the station, mother and I, in good time to 
meet the train that was due at a few minutes before seven. 
We were there about a quarter of an hour before the train 
was due, and we walked up and down the long narrow plat- 
form in the summer evening, talking about father and his 
delight in the new garden. 

“It was my fancy in the first instance,” said mother, 
“ but your father is so good to me that J have but to ex- 
press a wish, and he immediately makes it his own. If I 
were to ask for a roc’s egg, like the Princess Bad roulba- 
dour, I believe he would start off to Africa to look for 
one.” 

I remember laughing at the idea of the egg. 

“ A roc’s egg would be as big as all our house, mother. 
Wouldn’t it be funny if some one sent us one?” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


57 


There were very few people at the station, and we walked 
up and down and talked as merrily as if we had been in 
our own garden. Presently an electric bell began to ring, 
and then a porter came out and rang a bell on the platform 
in front of the little waiting-room, and theji the train came 
slowly in, and mother and I stood looking at the faces in 
the carriage windows. There was seldom any delay in 
finding out father among the arrivals. He was always 
one of the first to open the door, and always on the alert 
to see us. 

But on this evening we looked for him in vain. Three 
people got out of the train, and the train went on, and 
mother and I were left standing on the platform, disap- 
pointed and unhappy. The next train to stop at Lamford 
was not due until ten minutes to nine — too late for dinner, 
too late for the sunset on the river — a long, long time for 
us to wait. 

“ I must drive you home, Daisy, said my mother, “ and 
then I can come back to meet your father.’’ 

I tried to persuade her to wait there and let me wait with 
her — the idea of home and bed-time were distasteful to me. 
I could see that my mother was vexed and troubled. I 
clung to her as she moved to leave the station. 

“ Let us wait for father; I’m not tired; I’m not hun- 
gry. Do let us wait for him, and all go home together.” 

It was a lovely evening; the sun still bright, the station- 
master’s little garden full of sweet-scented flowers, roses, 
clove carnations, and sweet-peas. 

“ There may be a telegram at home,” said my mother. 
“ Yes, 1 have no doubt that he has sent me a telegram.” 

That idea seemed to decide her. She put me into the 
carriage, and drove home as fast as the ponies could go. I 
was almost afraid at the pace we traveled along the dusty 
roads and lanes; but we reached home safely, and then 
came a fresh disappointment. No telegram. 

I was sent to bed at half past eight, and mother went 
back to the station. I couldn’t sleep, but lay listening and 
waiting in the summer dusk in my room next mother’s 
dressing-room. I got my nurse to leave my door open, 
and I listened for the return of the carriage. 

When I heard the wheels I ran out upon the landing in 
my night-gown, and stood at the top of the stairs listening, 
expecting to hear my father’s voice directly the door was 


58 WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 

opened, but 1 only heard my mother speaking to the but- 
ler. 

Your master has not come by the nine-o’clock train, 
Simeon. There is no other train till after midnight. You 
will have to sit up for him and to arrange a comfortable 
supper. He may not have found time to dine in Lon- 
don.” 

1 ran down-stairs in my night-gown, barefooted, and 
tried to comfort my poor mother, for I could tell by her 
voice that she was unhappy. She took me in her arms and 
cried over me, and we went upstairs together, she scolding 
me a little for leaving my bedroom, but not really angry. 
1 knew that she was hardly thinking about me. 1 knew 
that she was miserable about my father. 

That was only the beginning of trouble. She was up all 
night, walking about her own room or going down-stairs 
and out into the garden, and to the gate to listen for his 
coming. All night at intervals I heard her going up and 
down, and the opening and shutting of the heavy hall door. 
The butler and one of the maids sat up all night. Mother 
told Simeon she felt sure his master would come home, by 
road, in the middle of the night even, rather than leave her 
in suspense. Such a thing as his breaking an appointment 
with her had never happened before. 

It was broad daylight, when I cried myself to sleep — so 
unhappy for mother’s sake; so frightened, without know- 
ing why, about my father. 

Mother left the house early next morning to go to Lon- 
don with Ambrose Arden. She did not come back for 
three days, and then my aunt Emily came with her, and 
mother was so altered that 1 hardly knew her. She was 
dressed in black, and her pale face had a look that made 
me tremble. She scarcely spoke to me or noticed me, but 
my aunt took me on her lap and told me that a great sor- 
row had come upon me. 

My father was dead. 

I would not believe it for ever so long. I had heard of 
people dying, but they were old people who had been ill 
for a long time, or weak little children, and even they had 
been ill for a good many days and nights before the end 
came. But my father was well and strong and happy 
when he sat in the cart waving us good-bye with his whip. 
My aunt saw that I did not believe or did not understand 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


59 


her; and she told me slowly how my father had died sud- 
denly in London when he was on his way to a lawyer^s 
office to buy Mr. Florestan’s laud. He was dead within a 
few hours after he drove away from our gate. I had no 
father now. Nothing could ever give him back to me upon 
this earth. If I were to spend all my life in prayers, never 
to rise up off my knees while I lived, my prayers would not 
give him to me for five minutes, would not gain me so 
much as the sound of his dear voice calling me from the 
lawn. 

My aunt took me to liondon with her that afternoon, 
and 1 think what 1 felt most in the midst of my sorrow was 
the thought that mother did not mind parting with me. 
She hardly looked at me, she put away my arms from her 
neck almost angrily when 1 clung to her crying, and beg- 
ging to be allowed to stay with her. Her eyes looked right 
over my head when she said good-bye to me at the door, as 
if she saw something a long way off, some horrible thing 
that froze her blood and made her dumb. 

I can understand what she felt now, and how in her grief 
she was hardly conscious of my existence, and that she did 
not really care whether I went or stayed. I can sympa- 
thize with her now. She has told me how she hardly 
missed me in those days of agony — only awaking some- 
times as if out of a dream to wonder that my place was 
empty. We had been so much together, I running after 
her everywhere like a lap-dog, she never tired of me, or 
impatient with me; and yet in that overwhelming sorrow 
she almost forgot that she had a daughter. She has owned 
as much to me, and I have never felt wounded or angry 
that it should have been so with her, since I have been able 
to understand the nature of such a grief as hers. But at 
the time I was heart-broken by her coldness. # 

Aunt Emily took me to London, and gave me over to 
nurses and governesses in her house in Harley Street. It 
is a very large house, the largest in the street, I believe, 
and it was built for a rich nobleman when Harley Street 
was new, and there was nothing but fields and country vil- 
lages to the north— no Regent’s Park, no squares and ter- 
races, and never-ending streets as there are now. It is a 
fine old house, with paneled walls and decorated ceilings, 
and large rooms at the back; but it seemed, oh! such a 


60 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


dreary house to me after our garden by the river, and our 
bright, gay rooms. 

“ Father is dead, and mother doesn’t love me any more,” 
1 said to myself again and again, as I sobbed myself to 
sleep in the strange bedroom, where the very curtains of 
the bed were an agony to me because of their strangeness. 
I had never been parted from my mother before. Wher- 
ever she and my father went they had taken me with them. 

My cousins were all older than me, and they had to work 
very hard under a French and a German governess. Frau- 
lein taught them music and painting, and mademoiselle 
taught them French, attended to their warck’obes, with a 
useful jHaid under her, and superintended their calisthenic 
exercises and dancing-lessons, a!id was “responsible for 
their figures.” I can not help putting that phrase in my 
book, for I heard my aunt use it very often. Her great 
desire was that her daugliters should be accom 2 )lished and 
elegant in all their attitudes and movements. 

“ 1 expect them to be statuesque in repose, and graceful 
in motion,” she said, and it gave her almost a nervous at- 
tack when she saw' Clementina sitting with her toes turned 
to each other, or her feet and ankles twisted into a knot 
under her chair. 

There is no malice in saying that Aunt Emily’s idea of 
education was the very opposite to that of Uncle Ambrose. 
He taught and trained me to bo happy in solitude, as he is, 
to be good company for myself, and to find new interests 
every day in books. Aunt Emily wdshcd her daughters to 
shine in society, to talk French and German, and to play 
and sing better than any other girls in their circle, and above 
all to make the most of their personal advantages. She is 
perfectly candid in the expression of her ideas, and makes 
no secret of her views upon education, so there is no harm 
in my recording them in this journal, which nobody is ever 
to read, so I might be as malevolent as I like without in- 
juring anybody. 

Mother says that I am very uncharitable sometimes in 
my ideas and judgments, and that a large-hearted charity 
is a virtue of age rather than youth. 1 know that I am 
quick to see the weak points in the characters of my friends 
and acquaintances, and I dare say] am just as "blind to 
my own defects. 

It is a lucky thing for Aunt Emily that her five daugh- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


61 


ters are all good-looking, and two of them decidedly hand- 
some. A plain daughter would have been an actual afflic- 
tion to her. All the ugliness of the family has concentrated 
itself in her only son, my cousin Horace, a very plain 
boy. But fortunately he is scientific, and promises to be a 
shining light in the medical profession; at least that is 
what his father and mother say of him. He has made a 
profound study of sanitation, and he can hardly talk to any 
one five minutes vvithout mentioning sewage gas. He is 
always altering the lighting or the drainage or the ventila- 
tion in Harley Street, and his father complains that his ex- 
periments are equivalent to a rent. 

Horace was eighteen when my father died, and while I 
was at Westgate with my cousins and the two governesses 
he used to come down on a Saturday and stop till Monday, 
and I must own to my diary, which is a kind of lion's 
mouth into which I can drop any accusations I like, that 
he gave himself great airs to his sisters and the governesses, 
and was altogether very disagreeable. 

Those summer weeks at Westgate were the unhappiest 
period of my life. I look back at them now I am grown 
up and wonder that I ever lived through them. My cous- 
ins were kind to me in a condescending way, as was natu- 
ral from big girls to a little giil, and the governesses were 
very sorry for me and tried to comfort me; but there was 
no comfort for me on the face of the earth without my 
mother, and night after night 1 dreamed of my dead fa- 
ther, and woke to the ago.’iy of knowing that I should never 
see his beloved face or hear his dear voice again, except in 
dreams. I think grown-up people forget how keenly they 
grieved and suffered when they were children, and that 
they never quite understand a ( hild's grief. I know that 
when either of the governesses tried to console me she 
always made just a little more miserable than I was before 
she took me on hjr lap and talked to me about heaven 
and my father. 

I heard by accident, as I was not intended to hear it, 
that my mother was very ill, dangerously ill; and I was so 
unhappy about her that after entreating again and again 
with passionate tears to be taken to her, I made up my 
mind to walk to London and from London to Kiver Lawn. 
1 had looked at the map of England sometimes when my 
cousins had their atlases out, and I knew that to reach 


62 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


Lamford I must go through London. I lay awake all 
night thinking how I was to get away when the governess 
and the maids were engaged, and I could creep out of the 
house without being seen. I believe I should have really 
started on this journey but for the arrival of my uncle 
Ambrose, who came upon me suddenly on the day after I 
had heard of my mother’s illness, and who found me sit- 
ting crying alone on the sands. 

His was the first voice that brought me comfort; it was 
upon his breast that I sobbed out my grief, until the bur- 
den seemed lightened somehow. He told me that my 
mother was out of danger now, and that she vvould soon 
get well, or at least well enough for me to go home and be 
with her again, and he said I must try and be a comfort 
and a consolation to her in the days to come. 

I told him I was afraid my mother had left off loving 
me since father’s death. She had not seemed to mind my 
going away, while 1 was heart-broken at leaving her. And 
then he tried to make me understand how in a great grief 
like my mother’s all things seemed blotted out, except that 
one overpowering sense of loss. He told me that a dark 
curtain had fallen over my mother’s mind, and that I 
should find her changed from the happy woman that I had 
known in the happy days that were gone. 

“ But the curtain will be lifted by and by, Daisy,” he 
said, “ and you will see your mother’s joyous nature return 
to her. No grief lasts forever. A year is a long time 
even for a great sorrow, and in a year your mother will 
begin to forget.” 

He meant this for consolation, but my tears broke out 
afresh at the thought that my father could be forgotten. 

“ 1 shall never forget him,” I said. 

“ No, my darling, he will live in your memory and your 
mother’s, but your memory of him will be sweet and sad. 
instead of bitter and cruel. He will have taken his natural 
place in the past, and his shadow will not darken the pres- 
ent as it does now.” 

“ Let me go home soon,” 1 said, clinging to him when 
he was leaving VVestgate later in the afternoon. “Pray, 
pray, pray let it be soon.” 

“ As soon as ever your mother is well enough to see 
you, darling,” he promised. 


WHOSE WAS THE HANli 


63 


next place in my heart after my father and mother, but he 
seemed nearer than ever after that day, and he has never 
lost the place that he took then, or the influence that he 
had over me then in my desolation. 

I spent three more weary weeks at Westgate after this. 
Aunt Talbot was with a fashionable party in the High- 
lands, Uncle Talbot was part of his time in Harley Street 
and part of his time rushing about England and Scotland 
by express trains to see his most distinguished patients. 1 
used to hear my cousins talk of the places he went to and 
the people he went to see — great people all of them. He 
had the life and sanity of cabinet ministers and bishops 
in his special custody, and he made them obey his most 
severe orders in fear and trembling. I used to sit and 
listen idly in my wretched, low-spirited state while my 
cousins and the governesses chatted about my aunt’s gowns 
and my uncle^s patients, and I remembered as children 
remember things in which they take no interest. 

At last the happy day came for my going home, and 
here came Uncle Ambrose to fetch me. “ How good it is 
of you to come so far,’^ 1 told him; “ you must have other 
things to do besides coming to fetch me.’^ 

“ There is no other thing in the world that comes before 
my duty to my little pupil and her mother,^^ he answered 
in his slow serious tone. 

We went off to the station in an open fly together, and 
Fm sure my lively cousins must have been very glad to get 
rid of a crying child that used to mope in corners and sit 
at meals with a melancholy face; but they couldn’t be 
gladder to part with me than 1 was to go away. I had 
tried- to take interest in their lessons when the German 
governess urged me to employ my mind, but their lessons 
seemed so dull and difficult compared with Uncle Am- 
brose’s way of teaching me. The fraulein was always 
grinding at grammar — while, except as far as learning my 
French verbs, I hardly knew what grammar meant, but, 
without being vain, it is only fair to Uncle Ambrose to say 
that at ten years old 1 knew a great deal more about the 
history of the world and the people who had lived in it 
than my cousin Dora, who was eighteen. And even in 
those days 1 knew something about the great poets of the 
world, of whom Dora and her sisters knew nothing; for 
Uncle Ambrose had told me all about Dante and his won- 


64 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


d erf 111 history of hell and heaven; and about Goethe and 
his Faust; and he had read Milton’s story of Adam and 
Eve and the Fallen Angel who tempted him, and Shake- 
speare’s “ Tempest and “ As A^ou Like It,” and “ Mid- 
summer Night’s Dream ” aloud to me, to familiarize my 
ear and my mind with poetry while I was still a child, he 
said. 1 had to thank his kindness for all I knew, and for 
being a better companion to my mother than 1 would have 
been if I had a fraulein and a mademoiscdle to teach me. 

When we were sitting in the railway carriage, and the 
sun was shining full upon Uncle Ambrose’s face, I noticed 
for the first time that there was a great change in him 
since the summer. 1 had been too excited and too busy to 
take notice of it before; but I saw now that he had grown 
thinner and paler, and that he looked older and very ill. 1 
put my arms round him, and kissed him as 1 used to do in 
the dear old days. “ Poor Uncle Ambrose,” I said; “ how 
sorry you must have been. I love you better than ever, 
dear, because you are so sorry for us.” His head was 
leaning forward on his breast, and he gave one great sob. 

That was his only answer. 

How distinctly 1 remember that journey, through the 
clear September light, by great yellow corn fields, and the 
blue bright sea, and then hop gardens, and orchards full 
of fruit, and then houses, houses, and houses, and then at 
last, the air grew dull and thick, and the sun seemed dead, 
and this was London. 

Uncle Ambrose was silent and thoughtful all through 
the journey, which seemed so long, oh, so long, as if it 
would never come to an end and bring me to mother and 
home. I have been to the Highlands since then, and to 
the Kiviera, but those journeys were with mother, and they 
did not seem half §o long as the journey from VA'estgate to 
London, and- across London to Paddington, and from Pad- 
dington to the little station at Lamford, where we waited 
for father that evening — for father, who was never, never, 
never coming home to us again. 

At the sight of the station and the station-master’s gar- 
den — which was all of a blaze with dahlias -and hollyhocks 
now, where the sweet-peas had been blooming — I burst 
into tears. They were the first I had shed since I left 
Westgate; but the sight of the garden brought back the 
memory of that evening when I walked up and down with" 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


65 


mother, and when we were both so gay and happy, talking 
of father and what he would say and how he would look 
when we saw his face at the carriage window. 

1 have but to shut niy eyes, evei] now, after seven years 
have changed me from a child to almost a woman, and 1 
can see the station lying all along the meadows by the river- 
side, and I can see my father’s face as I expected to see it, 
smiling at us as the train came in — dear, well-remembered 
face which I was never to see again. 

There was a carriage at the station to take us home, but 
mother wasn’t in the carriage. When he saw my disap- 
pointment, Uncle Ambrose told me that she was still a 
great invalid, and had not gone beyond the garden since 
her illness. 

“You will have to comfort and cheer her with your lov- 
ing little ways, Daisy,” he said; “ but you will have to be 
very quiet and very gentle. It is not so long since she 
could hardly bear the sound of any one’s voice. You will 
find her sadly changed.” 

“ More changed than you are?” I asked. 

“ Much more. Think how much more trouble she has 
gone through than 1 have had to bear.” 

“ But you look as if you couldn’t have been more sorry,” 
I said; for indeed I never had seen such sadness in any face 
as I had seen in his that day. 

^ ^ ^ 

Mother was lying on a sofa by the drawing-room fire. 
The evenings were beginning to be chilly, and she was an 
invalid, wrapped in a large white China crape shawl, one 
of father’s gifts, which I remembered ever since I could 
remember anything. There was a middle-aged woman in 
the room, neatly dressed in black, with a white cap and 
apron, whom I afterward knew as one of mother’s nurses. 
She had had two nurses all through her illness, one for the 
day and the other for the night, for there had been oiie 
dreadful time when it was thought that she might try to 
kill herself if she were left alone. 

Yes, she was changed; more changed than Uncle Am- 
brose. She was washed to a shadow, and there was no 
color in her face. Even her lips were white. Her beau- 
tiful hair, which father had been so proud of, had all been 
cut off, and she wore a little lace cap, which covered her 


60 


WHOSE WAS THE HAHD ? 


close-cropped head, and was tied under her chin. Her 
poor hands were almost transparent. 

She gathered me up in her arms, and she kissed and 
cried over me, and I thought even then that it did her good 
to have her little daughter back again. She told me years 
afterward that those tears were the first that had brought 
any sense of relief with them. She lifted me into a corner 
of her sofa, weak as she was, and she kept me there till my 
bed-time. She had my supper laid upon a little table by 
the sofa, and she fed me and cared for me with her own 
feeble hands, in spite of all the nurse could say, and from 
that night I was with her always. 

“ You don^t know what it is to me to have my little girl 
again,” she said to nurse; “ you don’t know what it is 
to feel this frozen heart beginning to melt, and to know 
that there is something left in this world that I can love. ” 

She said almost the same words to Uncle Ambrose next day 
when he came over to River Lawn soon after breakfast, to 
give me my morning lessons, and I thought he looked more 
and more sorry as he stood listening to her, with his hand 
upon the little pile of books which he had brought over from 
Ihe cottage. He answered mother with a smile a minute 
afterward. 

“ Yes, it is a blessed thing to know we can love and be 
beloved, ’ he said. 

Mother told me afterv/ard that there was a reason for his 
sympathizing with her in her sorrow more than any other 
friend. He, too, had lost his nearest and dearest, his good 
and devoted young wife, after a. brief illness, almost as 
suddenly as her loss had come upon her. He, too, was 
alone in the world, but for an only child, his son, of whom 
he was doubtless very fond. But, mother added, there 
were times when she fancied that he was fonder of me 
than of his own son. 

^ ^ 

Oar lives went on very quietly after that day, and from 
that day 1 was mother’s only companion. We had never 
been parted since my desolate days at Westgate, and we have 
lived almost out of the world. Mother says that next year, 
when I am eighteen, she will have to go into society for my 
sake, and that she will not be able always to go on refusing 
invitations to garden and tennis parties along the river 
banks from Henley to Reading. It will be only right for 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


67 


me to see a little more cf the world, mother says, and to mix 
with girls of my own age. I suppose I shall like it when the 
time comes, but I have no longing for parties, or dances, 
or fine clothes, and my cousins in Harley Street say I am 
the oddest girl they ever met with, but that it is no wonder 
I am odd considering the eccentric manner in which I have 
been educated. 

1 have been so happy, so happy with mother in all these 
years, so fond of our pretty house, which grows prettier 
every year under mother’s care, and our gardens, which 
are looked upon as model gardens by all the neighborhood. 
People come and ask to see them, as a great favor, which 
is rather hard upon mother and me who love seclusion. 

For seven years Uncle Ambrose has gone steadily on 
with my education, never missing a day, except when 
some slight illness has made either him or me unfit for 
work. As punctually as the clock strikes ten he appears at 
the little garden gate nearest his cottage. If the weather 
is warm we sit in the summer-house, or under the great 
willow, which grows and grows and grows, as if it were a 
magic tree. If it is not summery enough for sitting out- 
of-doors, we work in the boudoir upstairs, which mother 
has made my room. 

Yes, we have been happy together, mother and 1, but 
we have never forgotten father; we never have come to 
think less of our great loss. Saddest thoughts have mixed 
with our happiest hours. We never have forgotten him. 
We neyer can forget him. Many women as beautiful and 
as young-looking as my mother would have married a sec- 
ond husband within two or three years of my father’s death; 
but she has never given a thought to any other man than 
him, and she never will. Once 1 ventured to ask her if 
father was her first love; if she had never cared ever so 
little for any other lover; and she told me that he was the 
first that had ever spoken to her of love. She was only 
eighteen when she married; she was only nineteen when 
I was born. She and my father fell in love with each other 
at first sight; like a prince and princess in a fairy tale. 


68 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


CHAPTEE VI. 

DAISY^S DIAKY. 

1 SOMETIMES think mother hardly makes enough of 
Uncle Ambrose or of his goodness to me. I know she is 
grateful to him, and proud of my progress, which is all his 
work. But now and then it seems to me she keeps him 
too much at a distance, instead of treating'him as if he 
were a brother and really my uncle. She very seldom comes 
into the morning-room while I am at my studies there, and 
there are many days when he leaves the house at one 
o’clock without having seen her. Once in a way she asks 
him to stop to lunch, and when she does 1 can see his pale, 
fair face light up suddenly with a flush of pleasure, and he 
is full of life and talk at luncheon, he who is generally 
so calm and placid, like deep water; and after lunch he 
lingers and lingers in the garden or in the drawing-room, 
till mother is obliged to ask him to stay to tea; and after 
tea he goes away slowly and reluctantly, lingering to the 
very last, lingering at the gate if it is fine weather, and 
mother and I go out with him to say good-bye. 

He is fond of us both! It is the little gate in the fence 
near his cottage at which we say good-bye to Uncle Am- 
brose — not the gate by which father went out that summer 
morning, never to come back to us again. 

That which was brought back nearly a week afterward 
was not my father. That which lies under the grave that 
mother and I keep bright with flowers is not my father. 
We know that he is living still — somewhere. Living, or 
waiting in a placid sleep for the awakening to the new life. 
We know not how, we know not where; but we believe 
that he is living still, and that we shall see him again. 

As I grow older, and my education goes on, and absorbs 
more of my master’s valuable time, I wonder all the more 
at the sacrifice which he makes and has been making so 
long for my sake. W'hen I think that he is a man whose 
books are valued and praised by the greatest thinkers of 
his age, a man who might win distinction in almost any 
walk of literature, I am amazed at his willingness to waste 
so great a part of his life upon my insignificance. It is all 
the more wonderful, perhaps, because although when he 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


60 


came to live at Lamford he was a poor man, he is now a 
very rich man, a distant relation having died in America 
some years ago and 1 ft him a large fortune. 

1 hardly know when the change in his circumstances 
arose, he himselt made so light of the matter. It was Cyril 
who told me one day that his father was rich. 

“ Did you ever know such a man as my father/^ he 
said, “to goon living in that ugly old cottage when he 
might have a house in Park Lane and a country seat into 
the bargain, if he liked. 

I asked if Uncle Ambrose was really very rich. 

“ Heally, and really, and really, I believe,’’ answered 
Cyril, “ though he has never condescended to enter into 
particulars with me; but a Yankee fellow at Oxford told 
me all about the man who left father his fortune, and it 
was a biggish pile — that’s the Y^ankee’s expression, mind 
you, not mine.” 

Cyril is at Christchurch, Oxford, and he spent his last 
long vacation in Sweden and Norway. He has promised 
me that he will spend the next long, or, at any rate, the 
earlier part of his time, at Lamford, and that he will take 
me about in his boat, and that I shall help him with his 
classics. 

I’m afraid this is only idle compliment to me, but Uncle 
Ambrose says 1 really might be of some use to Cyril in 
reading Horace and Virgil with him, and that J know both 
those poets better than many under-graduates. 

If I do I have to thank Uncle Ambrose for my knowledge, 
and most of all for teaching me to love Latin poetry instead 
of to hate Latin grammar. 

Cyril is sometimes just a little inclined to find fault with 
his father for living in the small ugly house to which he 
came in his poverty; but as he has a very liberal allow- 
ance, can go where he likes for his vacations, and is never 
denied anything by the most indulgent of fathers, he feels 
that he has no right to complain. 

“ I’m so afraid that other fellows will take it into their 
heads that my father is a miser,” he said one day, “ when 
they find that I have no home to which I can invite them, 
and that my father mopes away his life in a cottage by (he 
Thames. And the worst part of the business is that most 
fellows in the University know every yard of ground be- 
tween Heading and Henley, and must know Lamford.” 


70 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


I told him that a man could not be said to mope away 
his life when he had writteii two books which had been 
read and praised all over the civilized world. 

“Well, no doubt with some men the books count for 
something, and they put my father down as an eccentric 
scholar, living his own retired life, for his own pleasure; 
but you see there are more fools than sensible people in the 
world, and the fools must think my father is too fond 
of money to spend it like a gentleman. I dare say they 
fancy that his wealth came to him too late in life, and that 
poverty’s small saving habits had got burned into his very 
nature. ” 

“ What does it matter what mistakes people of that kind 
may make about your father,” 1 said. “ We know that 
he is a gentleman in every act, and in every thought of his 
life, and that if he does not spend money upon things that 
please other people it is only because he cares for higher 
things which don’t cost money or make a great show.” 

“ You are right there, Daisy,” answered Cyril, “ and 
there are some things he cares for which doji’t make a 
show, and do cost money — his books, for instance. There 
are two or three thousand pounds sunk in his library — rare 
books, old books, new books. Oriental books, lining the 
walls of every room in the cottage — upon my word, now, I 
can scarcely take my bath of a morning without splashing 
a tall copy of the Fathers, and yet 1 can’t get him to make 
up his mind to build a house to hold his treasures. Per- 
haps, when the last niche of wall-space is filled, he will 
begin to think about a change of quarters.” 

Cyril is not like his father. He takes after his mother’s 
family, I am told. He has not his father’s pale fair skin 
and blue eyes, or his father’s pale and silky hair, or his 
father’s high and thoughtful brow. His eyes are dark gray, 
his hair is dark brown — his features are smaller and sharper 
than his father’s — a keen clever face, I have heard people 
call it; not the face of a thinker and dreamer like Uncle 
Ambrose. Some call Cyril handsome, and some do not. 
He has a very kind and bright expression, and is always 
very good to me. He is tall and straight and tremendously 
active, a first-rate oarsman, and, 1 am told, a good shot. He 
is very fond of Radnorshire and his mother’s people, and 
1 think he likes mother and me, though we do not see him 
very often. He laughs at my education and says that 


WllOSK WAS THE HAND ? 7l 

father Would have made me a blue-stockiiig if nature had 
not insisted upon making me something else. 

I wonder what that something else is? 

Father^s grave is in the church-yard at the other end of 
the village, such a pretty picturesque sleeping-place for the 
beloved dead. There is one corner of the church-yard 
wliich is separated from the river only by a strip of waste 
land covered with rushes, and by a low stone wall, clothed 
with mosses and lichens, gray, and gold, and green — a dear 
old wall with fine small-leaved ivy creeping over it here and 
there, and with fairy-like spleenwort growing out of the in- 
terstices of the stone. Just in the angle of the wall nearest 
the river lies my father’s grave, under the shadow of a 
great willow, like my tree on the lawn. It was because of 
that tree my mother chose the spot. Father had always 
talked of the big weeping willow as Daisy’s tree, and 
mother knew that he was fond of it for his little daugh- 
ter’s sake. So he lies under Daisy’s tree, and his only mon- 
ument is a low red granite cross, with his name and the 
date of his birth and death. No text, no verse; nothing to 
say how much he was beloved. Only a blank space for 
mother’s name when she is laid beside him. All (he rest is 
garden. Mother thinks the garden tells best of our love 
for him who lies there, because it is a changeful living 
thing, and not dead and immutable like letters carved iii 
marble. 

Mother and I do all the work of this little garden with 
our own hands. No one else is allowed to touch it, and 
tlie flowers change with every change of the seasons, from 
Christmas roses to the pure whiteness of the chrysanthe- 
mums in the late autumn; and our garden is always lovely, 
and full of freshness and perfume. Fair weather or foul, 
one of us goes there every day. We never miss a day while 
we are at Lamford, When we are away the garden is left 
to itself, and when we come back we have to make up for 
that neglect. We had rather there should be neglect and 
decay for a little while than that hireling hands should cul- 
tivate father’s garden. 

That corner by the river is very lonely, (he most remote 
from the church and the vicarage, and the path by which 
people go to church. I have sat there for hours and no 
one has ever come near me, though 1 have heard the boats 


72 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


going by, and people talking as they rowed past the little 
rushy waste outside the wall. Nobody can see me from 
the river when I am sitting there, for father’s tree makes 
me a great green tent, just as my tree does on the lawn 
at home. Sometimes I hold the soft-drooping greenery 
apart and peep out at the boats going by in the sunlight 
while I sit in cool shadow. 

Many and many an afternoon have I spent here with my 
books, and my Scotch deer-hound, Pompey, more solitary, 
more secure from interruption than if I had been at home, 
where any one of the few friends with whom we are inti- 
mate might drop in upon me. In the church-yard I have 
my life all to myself, to read or to think, and i prophesy 
that a good deal of this diary will be scribbled on the grassy 
bank under the low wall by my father’s grave. There is 
a little hollow nook among the ivy and bramble and 
fern, which is my own particular seat, and I can study 
there better than anywhere else. 

One day Beatrice Keardon came and found me out in my 
nook, came sailing up to me in her bouncing noisy way, 
flourishing her racket. 

“ So I’ve found you at last, D.,” she said. She is one of 
those girls who can never call anything by its right name, 
and she always calls me D. “ Sibkin told me you were out 
ior the whole afternoon, but I thought I should unearth 
you. Come and make up a set.” 

“ Now you have found me, perhaps you’ll be kind 
enough to lose me again,” 1 answered; “ 1 should have 
thought that even you would understand that when I come 
to sit by my father’s grave I like to be alone, and I don’t 
like tennis rackets.” 

1 don’t often lose my temper, but I do think Beatrice 
Reardon — though no doubt she means well — is a girl who 
would have exasperated Job. There are times when 1 feel 
that a continuance of Beatrice’s society would be worse 
than boils. 

“You’re a morbid, disagreeable little D.,”she said, “ and 
you’ll find out your mistake before you’re thirty, for by 
that time you’re moping, solitary, cross-grained ways will 
make you look forty, and then you’lPbe sorry.” 

She marched off with her racket on her shoulder, sing- 
ing “ Gather your roses while ye may,” in her loud mezzo- 
soprano voice, the voice of Lamford and two villages be- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 78 

yond, and I am happy to say she never invaded my peaceful 
corner again. 

Here I read the sixth book of the ^nid, and here I read 
Dante, until I felt as if 1 were more familiar with the world 
of shadows than the world of realities. Here I learned 
those odes which Uncle Ambrose chose for me in my little 
Horace, and my favorite bits from the Georgies, and my 
favorite ecologiies. Here I read Milton and Shakespeare. 
The spot is full of lovely images and haunting fancies. 

We have very few friends, though mother is obliged to 
be civil to a good many acquaintances scattered about the 
happy river, between Henley Bridge and Caversham W'eir. 
She visits very little — only in the quietest way at the houses 
of her oldest friends, the people she knew best in my fa- 
ther’s time. The only families of whom we see much are 
the vicar’s and the doctor’s, for mother’s charities bring her 
in contact with both, and as there are girls in both families 
I have been invited very often to play tennis or to join in 
water picnics, or any other homely festivities. I have 
never gone to parties at either house since I was a child . 
and the girls laugh at me for my solitary bringing up; but 
mother and I have been too happy in our own quiet way 
for me to think that I lose much in staying away from the 
Eeardon’s birthday dances and hobbledehoy parties out- 
doors and in. 

Not a hundred miles from Lamford there is a big red 
house by the river, called Templemead, which once be- 
longed to a noble family, and which is now occupied by 
Mr. Copeland, who coaches young men for the army. 
Some of the young men are the sons of noble families, and 
many of them are rich, and I’m afraid I must say that 
most of them behave badly. The vicar says animal spirits, 
I say bad manners. The vicar says that as I have never 
had a brother I don’t understand young men’s ways; and 
certainly, judging by Cyril’s accounts of the goings-on at 
Christchurch, young men must be extraordinary creatures, 
with the oddest ideas of pleasure. 

Cyril says that if Mr. Eeardon had not three daughters 
to marry he would not be quite so charitable in his opinion 
of Mr. Copeland’s young men; but I don’t think our dear 
old vicar is a contriving sort of person, and 1 don’t think 
one ought to be too hard upon Mrs. Eeardon for giving so 
many tennis parties and Cinderella dances and blind-man’s- 


74 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


buff parties, and water picnics, for three daughters to 
marry must mean hard work for any mother. 

Mrs. Tysoe, the doctor^s wife, has two sons and only one 
daughter; so there is not nearly so much excuse for her, 
and I must say she does make rather too much of those 
unmannerly hobbledehoys from Templemead, and 1 can 
not conceal from my dear diary that Laura Tysoe’s con- 
versation would be more entertaining if it were not all 
about Mr. Copeland's young men. 

I am afraid my diary is going to develop all the worst 
propensities in my nature— above all, the propensity for 
thinking too much of myself and looking down upon other 
people. A diary is such a safe confidante, and it is such a 
comfort to know one can say just what one likes without 
any fear of having one's silly babble babbled about and 
made sillier by one's dearest friend. 

So, dear diary, I mean to scribble just what I like in 
your nice, smooth, white pages, and when my foolishness 
has all run off in pen and ink I have only to turn the key 
in your neat little brass lever lock, and my secrets are as 
safe as if they were shut up in the heart of the biggest 
pyramid. 


CHAPTER VII. 

SHE ANSWERED “STAY." 

Seven years! Robert Hatrell had been lying in his 
grave seven years and a day, and Ambrose Arden was 
slowly pacing the river terrace which the dead man planned 
in the pride of his heart while his murderer was lying in 
wait for him somewhere in the big city yonder, far away to 
the very east, where the bright blue sky changed to a dull 
and heavy gray. Ambrose Arden and Clara Hatrell were 
walking side by side upon the broad gravel terrace between 
two rows of cypresses, she with a slow and listless step, he 
suiting his pace to hers, but by no means listless, intent 
rather, watching 'every change in the pensive face, every 
shade upon the fair forehead. 

Seven years and a day had he been lying in his grave — 
seven years and nine days had gone by since he was found 
stark and cold, with glassy eyes staring up at the smoke- 
stained ceiling in the shabby lodging-house near St. Giles’ 
Church, a wonder and a mystery to all England. For 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


75 


seven years his widow had mourned him, missing him 
and regretting him every day of her life— albeit calmly 
happy with a daughter she adored — brooding over the 
tragedy of his death, brooding over the cruel destiny which 
had sundered so perfect a union. 

Her sorrow was in nowise diminished by the years that 
had come and gone — her memory of the beloved dead was 
no less vivid than it was before the first flowers had bloomed 
upon his grave. He was still in her mind the one loved 
and lovable of men; her first and her only lover. Time 
had brought calmness and resignation, but Time had not 
weakened love. 

Ambrose Arden, walking by her side in the sultry still- 
ness of the d uly afternoon, knew her heart almost as well 
as she knew it herself. 

Seven years had made little alteration externally in Rob- 
ert Hatrelks widow, or in Robert Hatrelhs friend. At six- 
and-thirty Clara Hatrell was still a beautiful woman, so 
much the lovelier perhaps in her ealm maturity for the 
seclusion and repose of her widowhood. 

The cares and excitements of the woman of society had 
not written premature wrinkles on the broad white brow. 
The disappointments and vexations of the fashionable world 
had not drawn down the corners of the mobile mouth or 
pinched the perfect oval of the cheek. 

Ambrose Arden was exactly the man he had been seven 
years before — fair-cornplexioned, dreamy-eyed, with the 
sell Otari’s bent shoulders and with the scholar’s measured 
accents. A remarkable-looking man always, and a fine- 
looking man in spite of those stooping shoulders and the 
slow meditative walk; a man to attract the admiration and 
the love of women, as being different from his fellow-men, 
and with something of that power which women call mag- 
netic in his thoughtful eyes — so blue, so clear, with the 
color and transparence of childhood, yet with such an un- 
fathomable depth of thought. 

Seven years, and in all that length of months and weeks 
and days he had been this woman’s slave; and she knew it 
not. Day and night, waking or sleeping, near or far, he 
liad adored her, and she knew it not. Seven years since 
her husband’s death, and how many years before? Only 
since the hour he first looked upon her — when it had been 
to him as if the heart within him, a strong and passionate 


76 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


heart, whose forces he had never known till that moment, 
leaped suddenly into life and linked his fate with hers for- 
ever. 

He had married a fair young wife, and lie had been a 
good and tender husband. He had truly and tenderly 
mourned the early dead. But till he met Clara Hatrell he 
knew not what passion meant, and he had never suspected 
that latent fire smoldering within him ready to leap into 
flame at sight of a beautiful face. 

He knew not, and could never hope to know, what it 
was that made this woman different from all other women 
upon earth, the one supreme mistress of his life, whom to 
serve was destiny, wdiom to love was a necessity of his 
being. 

And so for seven years and more before her husband^s 
death, and for seven years after, he had been her idolater 
and slave, she nothing knowing — accepting his quiet atten- 
tions as calmly as she took a basket of liot-house flowers 
from her gardener, asking no questions of her own heart 
or of his, thinking of him only as an amiable eccentric, 
who lived at her gates because it was his fancy so to live, 
who gave one third of his life to the tuition of her child 
because it was his whim so to waste himself. 

Her kindnesses to him had been of the slightest, for in 
her widowed loneliness it had behooved her to keep even so 
old a friend somewhat aloof, lest the little world of Lam- 
ford should begin to have ideas and speculations about her 
and her daughter’s teacher. She had kept her life com- 
pletely apart from the life of student and master, and had 
on rarest occasions offered hospitality to the man to whom 
she owed so much. To his son she had been more frankly 
kind, treating him almost as a son of the house, and let- 
ting him feel that he was always welcome. Even to OyriTs 
college friends her house had been open, and he had in no- 
wise stretched his privileges, though there were occasions 
upon which he was glad to take a boating friend to Kiver 
Lawn rather than to his own dull old cottage, with its 
shabby furniture and atmosphere of overmuch learning. 

So had he worshiped her faithfully and silently for four- 
teen years, just the length of Jacob’s servitude for Kachel, 
and she was still afar off, cold as marble, unresponsive, 
unconscious of his love. It was a hard thing to have been 
so patient and to have waited so long and to be no nearer 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


77 


the goal — to feel the golden years of manhood slipping 
away like those faded lilies yonder drifting with the cur- 
rent, flowers which some careless hand had plucked and. 
flung away. It was hard, it was more difficult to be patient 
now when he felt the glory and strength of life beginning 
to wane. Was he to be an old man before he dared ask for 
his guerdon — he who had done so much to win his beloved, 
who had sacrificed for her sake all that other men care for? 

To day his heart was throbbing with a new vehemence, 
and there was a fire in his thoughts that must needs burst 
into a blaze before long. Everything in life has its limits; 
even the patience of a man who loves as he loved. 

“ Daisy grows prettier and more womanly every day,^’ 
he said, after a contemplative silence of some minutes, 
“ you must not waste her life as you have wasted your own 
— -since your bereavement. 1 conclude that you intend to 
go into society next season, if only for her sake.^^ 

“ I have been thinking about it,” Clara answered, quiet- 
ly, “ and 1 suppose it must be so. Poor child, she has 
seen very little of the world, but we have been so happy 
together, so completely united that I do not think my 
Daisy will ever regret her solitary girlhood. However, 
everything must come to an end,” with a faint sigh, “ so 
I have asked my sister Emily to look out for a furnished 
house at the West End, in Wilton Crescent, or somewhere 
about there, and if she can find one that Daisy and I like, 
I shall take it next January. You must come and see us 
in our new home,” she added, smiling at him with her 
calm and friendly smile. 

“ 1 should seem like a fish out of water among smart 
people.” 

‘‘ You might feel bored by their frivolity, but the smart 
people would be very glad to know you. They must all 
have heard of your books.” 

“ Heard of them, yes: read them, no — and 1 fancy there 
are not many smart people who care for the makers of books 
— only the intellectual few, the stars of the smart world, 
who have found time to cultivate their minds as well as to 
go to parties.” 

‘‘ Cyril will come to us often, I hope,” she said, cor- 
dially. “ 1 shall have to give parties, and I must have a 
day for callers. It will be all very dreadful. ” 

This time her sigh was deep and long. 


78 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“ Why dreadful? You wlio are still young, still beauti- 
ful, and rich enough to indulge your caprices, are not a 
woman to shrink from society/^ 

“ Am I not? Oh, Mr. Arden, how can you be so short- 
sighted? Do you think it will be no ordeal to me to face 
strangers? Do you forget that 1 am the widow of a man 
who was cruelly and mysteriously murdered, and whose 
murder set all England talking and wondering? I shrink 
with horror from the thought of going into society, know- 
ing that peojde will whisper about me, and point me out 
to each other in every room I enter. But that isn’t the 
worst! Daisy will hear. Daisy will be told the dreadful 
history we have kept hidden from her. Here peojde are 
kind and considerate, and they have respected her feelings 
— but in London it will be different.” 

“ True, she can not be so fenced round and protected 
in society as she has been among your few intimate friends 
here,” answered Arden, thoughtfully, “ but seven years are 
a long time. Dynasties are forgotten within a lesser 
period. Look at France for instance, and see how little 
trace is left of a fallen empire and a suicidal war. Tout 
passe, tout lasse, tout casse. That tragedy which made so 
deep a mark in your life is forgotten by the world at large. 
I do not think you need fear any annoyance either for 
yourself or Daisy. But there is one way by which you 
could put a barrier between the present ajid the past, if you 
would but take that way.” 

His pale, fair face flushed as he drew nearer to her, his 
eyes lighted with a sudden fire as he laid his long white 
hand upon her shoulder, stopping her almost imperiously, 
looking down at her with a resoluteness that gave to his 
face something of the eagle look which belongs to conquer- 
ing natures. 

“ What way?” she faltered, periflexed by the sudden 
change in a familiar face. 

“ Take my name instead of yours. Let Eobert HatrelTs 
widow vanish ii> Ambrose Arden’s wife. Clara, I can not 
be eloquent where all I value on earth is at stake. I love 
you — I have loved you ever since — no, 1 dare not say how 
long. Only remember that 1 have never offended you by 
one hint of my consuming love. I have waited, waited, 
waited — until it seems to me that my life is like the chil- 
dren of Israel’s pilgrimage, through the desert, so long, so 


WH(5SE WAS THE HAND? 79 

weary, so far from the Promised Land. Let me not be 
like iheir leader! Let me not die with the haven of my 
hope seen dimly in unattainable distance. 1 have been 
patient, have I not? 1 have never offended you, Clara. 

“ Offended me, no. You have been a kind and devoted 
friend,^" she answered, quickly, “ but I never thought you 
wanted to be more than a friend. Nothing was further 
from my thoughts — nothing,’’ she went on in an embar- 
rassed manner, and then with a sudden transition to warm- 
est feeling she exclaimed, “ You know how 1 loved him. 
You know how dear his image is to me. It would be 
treason to care for any one else, it would be cowardice 
to take another name. I am the widow of Robert Hatrell, 
of him whom some devil murdered. Marry again! Call 
myself by another name! Why, to be true to the past I 
ought to give up all my future life to one continuous en- 
deavor to bring his murderer to justice.” 

“ My dearest, in plays and in novels murderers are 
brought to the scaffold by devoted women like you, after 
any interval the novelist or dramatist may find convenient, 
but in real life there is only one kind of machinery fhat 
works, and that is the much-abused police. AVhen the 
police, stimulated by the offer of a large reward, can nob 
find a criminal within seven years from the date of the 
crime, you may be sure the criminal is safe. The odds 
are that the murderer who is not caught within a week has 
saved his neck. In the case of my lamented friend the 
assassin was a man of peculiar audacity — prompt, resolute, 
unflinching, and there is strong reason to believe that the 
murder in Denmark Street was not his first crime.” 

“ Not his first,” cried Clara Hatrell, with a sudden 
vehemence which startled her lover. “ Then it will not be 
his last crime, and he will be caught sooner or later, like 
the man in Vienna the other day.” 

The man in Vienna was a professional murderer who 
had been trapped like a wild beast after a series of crimes. 
When trapped, condemned, and assured that his case was 
hopeless he confessed, gloating over the details of his 
iniquity, proud of having struck horror to the hearts of his 
fellow-men. 

“He will be caught some day,” said Clara Hatrell, 
“just as that Austrian was caught, red-handed, and he 
will confess his catalogue of crimes.” 


80 WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 

The scholar was silent for a few moments, and then an- 
swered quietly: 

“ Such cases as those are rare; but, as you say, the mur- 
derer may confess some day. Clara, it is time you drevv a 
veil over that dark and cruel past; it is time you took pity 
on the man who loves you. Oh, my beloved, I have no 
words to tell my love. I have given you years of my life 
where other men give words. I have waited seven years, 
and now I feel that I have spoken too soon.^' 

There was a marble bench near the spot where (hey 
were standing — an antique seat which had been brought 
from Rome to adorn Mrs. Hatrell’s garden. Ambrose 
Arden staggered a few paces forward and flung himself 
upon this bench, and there, with his face hidden in his 
hands, sobbed out his passion, with sobs which shqok his 
powerful frame, and swelled the veins upon his clasped 
hands. 

That agony of grief touched Clara Hatrell with sudden 
pity. He had been so good and true, and it was love, pas- 
sionate love for her which had chained him to the dull 
monotony of a life that was a puzzle to the people who 
knew his talent and his means. It was for her he had sac- 
rificed himself, for her sake he had educated her child as 
never child was educated before. And he had been her 
husband’s trusted friend and adviser; her husband’s better 
sense. What more faithful friend, what wiser counselor 
and guide could she choose for herself in the labyrinth of 
life? 

What should she say to him? Was she to bid him wait 
and hope, or tell him plainly th^she could never be his 
wife? She had vowed no vow to remain single all her life, 
for it had seemed to her in her fond regret that a second 
marriage for her was of all things upon this earth the least 
possible. There had been no spoken promise to her child, 
but Daisy had taken it for granted that her mother would 
be constant to the dead until death reunited the broken 
bond, until she should lie down by his side, his true wife in 
the grave. 

Pity and gratitude moved her profoundly at sight of 
Ambrose Arden’s agony. He fought against his weakness, 
as a strong man fights his foe, until those convulsive sobs 
came at longer intervals, and the powerful shoulders ceased 
to heave. At last, with a final struggle, he dashed the 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


81 


tears from his eyes, rose from the bench, and stood before 
her calm and still, but disfigured by the vermilion stain 
upon his eyelids and the deathly pallor of cheek and lip. 

“Forgive me for having made a fool of myself, Mrs. 
Hatrell,"' he said, huskily; “ I ought to have known bet- 
ter. I ought not to have trusted myself to speak. 11 ow 
you must despise mel^^ 

She held out her hand to him with a gentle seriousness. 

“ Despise you?'^ she repeated, softly. “ Can you think 
me so base as not to be grateful for your patient friend- 
ship, and for your love? But you should not have spoken 
to me of love. You should remember that my heart is 
buried in my husband^s grave—yet believe, at least, that 1 
am not ungrateful. Let us be friends as we have been in 
the quiet years that have come and gone since his untimely 
death. 

“ No, no, Clara — that blessed interval — that paradise of 
the dead — is over. Friendship is too thin a mask for pas- 
sion. I could not go on acting my part — after to-day. It 
must be all or nothing.'’^ 

She hung her head, and the slow tears rolled down her 
cheeks. She did not love him, but she did not want to let 
him go. 

“It must be all or nothing, Clara, 'Mie repeated, still 
holding the hand that she had given him in assurance of 
friendship. “ I must leave you at once and forever, or stay 
with the hope of winning you. 

“ Stay,"'’ she answered, gently. 

He dined at River Lawn that evening for the first time 
since Robert Hatrelbs death, a cosy little party of three, his 
pupil pleased to have his company and full of affectionate 
attentions to him all through the repast, complaining of 
his want of appetite, his indifference to certain dishes which 
Cyril liked and which were really worthy of his notice. 
.They dined in one of the old cottage rooms, a room with a 
low ceiling, an old-fashioned dado and chimney-piece, and 
a bow- window, the best parlor of the original building. 
The dining-room had been very little used during Clara’s 
widowhood. 

They took their coffee in the veranda, in front of the 
drawing-room, enjoying the beauty of the night and the 
newly risen moon. 


WHOSK WAS THE HAND? 


S2 


“ Shall I play you a little Mozart?^^ asked Daisy, and 
without waiting for an answer she left them and seated 
herself at the grand piano, from whence she could see them 
dimly, as they sat in the shadow of the clematis and mag- 
nolia which overhung the veranda. 

She was not a brilliant pianiste, having given only her 
leisure hours to music; but she played with delicacy and 
expression, and as she had been content to devote herself 
to one composer she had learned to interpret his composi- 
tions with feeling and understanding. 

“ Mozart is enough for one life-time,’^ she said, when 
her cousins ridiculed her limited repertoire, being taught 
by a master who discovered a new Sclavonic composf'r 
every quarter. “ 1 never hope to play as well as he ought 
to be played if 1 go on working all the days of my life. 

The clever fingers flew over the keys in the light and 
airy Fisher variations. The round white wrist moved with 
easy grace in the passages for crossed hands, the player 
looking straight before her all the time at those two mo- 
tionless figures between the lamp-light and the moon. 

llow earnestly he bent over her mother as he talked; 
how still her mother sat, with slightly drooping head; and 
how odd that on this one day in seven years her mother 
should ask him to dinner, and allow him to spend the even- 
ing in a long tete-a-tete. She had kept him at such a dis- 
tance hitherto that any departure from the old habit 
seemed strange. 

Hi sis ^ Hi 

It was Daisy’s custom to spend half an hour or sojn her 
mother’s room before going to bed. These two, who lived 
together always, had so much to say to each oilier that the 
day seemed insufficient for confidential talk, and if the girl 
happened to be deprived of her mg\ii\y tete-d-tete she would 
complain that she saw nothing of her mother, and was 
altogether hardly used. 

On this particular evening, after Mr. Arden had wished, 
them good-night and strolled across to his cottage on the 
other side of the lane, the mother and daughter walked up 
and down the terrace two or three times in the moonlight 
before going in for good; and then the doors were shut and 
locked, and the lamps were put out, and River Lawn sunk 
into darkness except for five lighted windows on the first 
floor. Three of these windows, which opened on a wide 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


83 


balcony, belonged to Mrs. IlatreH’s bedroom and bondoiiy 
the other two were Daisy’s, and the lamp-light shbne 
through artistic terra-cotta muslin curtains which the girl 
had draped with her own hands. The boudoir was one of 
the prettiest rooms in the house. It had been planned and 
furnished by Robert Ilatrell as an offering to the wife he 
admired, and both Clara and her daughter loved it all the 
more for the sake of the love that had presided over its 
creation. Here in the subdued light of a shaded lamp 
Clara sunk somewhat wearily into a deep arm-chair, and 
sat silent while Daisy moved about the room, looking at 
the water-color studies on the wall — a Surrey lane by 
Birkett Foster, a girlish head by Dobson, a street corner in 
Venice by Clara Montalban — or lightly touching the books, 
the Dresden china boxes, and Indian bronzes on the tables, 
in idle restlessness. 

“ You look tired to-night, mother dear,” she said pres- 
ently, watchful of her mother’s troubled face. 

“ Yes, dear, I am very tired.” 

“ And yet you have not been beyond the garden to-day. 
It must be the heat that has tired you. I was so glad you 
asked Uncle Ambrose to dinner for once in a way. You 
are not very hospitable to him, you know. He does not 
get much attention from you in return for all his goodness 
to me.” 

” You know I am grateful to him, Daisy; but you and 1, 
living alone together, can hardly be expected to entertain 
gentlemen. ” 

“ Why, mother, you surely don’t suppose that people 
vvould talk if he were to dine here every day. VTiat a 
strange ideal Uncle Ambrose a confirmed old bachelor.” 

” People are more ready to talk than you would ever 
suppose, Daisy. Mr. Arden is not an old man.” 

” Not in 3 ^ears, but he is old in thoughts and habits. 
He is not like other men.” 

“No, he is not like other men. He has deeper feelings 
than most men. Come here, darling, and be quiet if you 
can. You make me nervous while you are moving about 
and touching things.” 

“ 1 will be a very mouse for tranquillity, mother dear,” 
cried the girl, smiling, in a lialf-sitting, half-kneeling posi- 
tion at her mother’s feet. 

The mother caressed the dark-brown hair, tenderly 


84 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


touched the broad forehead, above hazel eyes, that were 
like her own, eyes that looked wonderingly at her, seeing 
an unwonted trouble in her face. 

“ Daisy, would it distress you if — if — in time to come 1 
were to marry again?^’ 

“ Distress me! No, mother. It would be only natural 
that you should marry again — you who are so handsome 
and so young-looking — if you could meet any one good 
enough for you. No, 1 am not such a selfish, ungrateful 
daughter as to be distressed at any change which would 
make your life happy. I should be jealous, no doubt, hor- 
ribly jealous — after having had you all to myself — and I 
should hate the man. I hate him already in anticipation, 
without knowing what he is like or where he is coming 
from, or when he will come. But doiiH be frightened, 
dearest; for your sake I should do my best to behave ad- 
mirably, and I would try and school myself to tolerate 
the — She screwed up her lips as if some abusive epithet 
were on the point of utterance, and ended in a loud, clear 
voice with the monosyllable “ Man!’^ 

“ But what if it were some one you like already — some 
one you love, Daisy 

“ Some one 1 love — a man! Why, that could be only 
one man in the world — Uncle Ambrose,^^ exclaimed Daisy, 
gazing at her mother with widely opened eyes, surprised 
and half incredulous. 

“It is Mr. Arden who urges me to marry him. No 
thought of a second marriage would ever have entered my 
head but for him.'’^ 

“Uncle Ambrose; what an absurd id ea,^'’ said Daisy, 
slowly. “Uncle Ambrose,^^ lingering over the name. 
“ Uncle Ambrose in love, like a young man! It seems 
almost ridiculous.’^ 

“ Girls of seventeen think that hearts are cold and 
numbed with age at forty,” said Clara Hatrell, “but it is 
not always so. There are attachments that outlast youth.” 

“ Yes, mother dear, I can quite understand that, and if 
it had been the colonel of a cavalry regiment — a fine, hand- 
some man who had distinguished himself in India, with an 
iron-gray mustache — or a politician, a man of the world — 
I shouldn’t have beeji a bit surprised to hear that he was 
madly in love with you. But Uncle Ambrose, a man who 
only lives to read books that other people don’t read, and 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


85 


brood over questions that other people don’t understand! 
I could never imagine such a man as that in love. He 
has talked to me of his wife, and of his grief when he lost 
her; but I could hear in his subdued and placid way of 
talking that he had never been in love with her — not as 
liochester was in love with Jane, or Eavenswood with 
Lucy,” concluded Daisy, whose examples and pictures of 
life were all taken from her favorite novels. 

“Well, Daisy, I was of your opinion yesterday, and I, 
too, thought Mr. Arden incapable of a romantic attach- 
ment; but now he has shown me his heart — such an un- 
selfish, devoted heart — a heart which beats only for you 
and Cyril and me. He is not happy, Daisy dear. His 
lonely life is killing him, though people think he is a re- 
cluse by choice. He longs for a fuller life — for a home. 
He asked me to marry him, after waiting seven years to 
prove his fidelity to me, and his respect for the friend he 
lost in my dear husband. If I refuse we shall see him no 
more — you will lose your kind master.” 

“ And if you say yes he will live with us alwa 3 ^s,” ex- 
claimed Daisy. “ I have so often thought you unkind for 
turning him out of the house when he evidently longed to 
stay. I have even thought you ungrateful; but it would 
be very grateful of you to marry him.” 

“ You talk as if you would like me to marry him, Daisy. 
Would you really?” 

“ Yes, I really would, for his sake, because 1 think he 
deserves a good deal more attention than you have ever 
shown him. Only there is one thing — ” 

“ What is that, pet?” 

“ I could never call him father. I could never speak 
tlie word I spoke at the gate that fatal morning when my 
own dear father bade us good-bye. He would be Uncle 
Ambrose to the end.” 

There was a silence, during which the mother sat with 
downcast eyelids and thoughtful brow; perplexed, uncer- 
tain, wavering between two opinions; and then Daisy began 
again with a startling suddenness. 

“ Y^ou would be Cyril’s mother, and I should be his sis- 
ter. It would be very nice to have such a clever brother.” 

Another silence; another sudden burst of speech from 
Daisy. 


80 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“ There is one question I have not asked you/' she said, 
impressively. “ JJo you love him?" 

“ I answered that question in advance, Daisy, a year 
ago, when we were talking together on this spot, just as 
we are talking to-night. I told you then that your father 
was my first love, and that he would be my last. That is 
as true now as it was a year ago; it will be true to the end 
of my life. " 

“ Poor Uncle Ambrose!" sighed Daisy. “ I have always 
pitied a man who marries a widow. You know what Guy 
Darrell says in ‘ What will He do with It'? ‘ Nothing so 
insipid as a heart warmed up.' And yet that very Guy 
Darrell marries a widow, after all. Poor Uncle Ambrose! 
But you don't dislike him, do you, mother?" 

“ Dislike him? No. He is the one man 1 would choose 
for a friend and counselor. I respect and admire him for 
his fine character— so free from unworthy ambitions, so 
single-minded — and for his intellect. There is no one 1 
would sooner have as my friend and companion — no one 
whom I would rather obey." 

‘‘ Jn those things where women do obey their husbands," 
said Daisy, making a wry face. “ I am not overfojid of 
that word ‘ obedience;' and 1 hope, if ever 1 marry, my 
husband will not have the bad taste to pronounce it in my 
hearing. Dear, dearest one," with a sudden change to 
earnestness, “ there are tears streaming down your cheeks. 
Are you unhappy, mother?" 

“ No, love, only troubled and undecided. I want to act 
for the best. " 

“ Then I really think you ought to marry Uncle Am- 
brose. He is so devoted to us both, and he knows so much; 
and it will be very nice to have him and Cyril by our fire- 
side on a winter evenhig. " 

Mother and daughter kissed and clasped each other, and 
Daisy sobbed out her emotions on her mother’s breast; and 
the end of this confidential talk was Clara Hatrell's prom- 
ise to marry the man who adored her. 


CHAPTER Vlir. 
daisy's honey^-moon diary. 

How strange life is. The change (hat has come in my 
life came so suddenly that I fancied I should never be ac- 


WHOSPJ WAS THi] HAND? 


87 


ciistoined lo the new state of tilings; jet after a little more 
than a month I feel as if Uncle Ambrose had lived with us 
for years, and as if I had always been one of a united 
family of four instead of the other half of my mother^’s soul. 

In my thoughts of her I have always called her what 
Horace called Y\vg\\—AnimcB diwAdixim mecB. 

Have I lost her now that she is Ambrose Arden^s wife, 
or rather, how much of her love and her sweet companion- 
ship have I lost? 

Naturally there is a loss. I can not be to her quite what 
I was before she gave herself to a husband who worships 
her, who seems jealous of every thought and every moment 
she gives to any one but himself. We can no longer live 
like Hcrniia and Helena, before Puck set them by the ears. 
We are no longer more like twin sisters than mother and 
daughter, as people used to say we were in the old days 
which begin to look so far away. No, it must be owned 
there is a loss, and a loss that I shall feel all my life; but 
it is not so great a loss as to make me unhappy, for I know 
my mother loves me as truly and fondly as ever, and that 
she would not part with me for anything in the world. I 
know that Uncle Ambrose thoroughly deserves her love, 
and that he is doing his utmost to win it. I know that to 
me he is a second father, and that I am never tired of his 
society. 1 know that the atmosphere of love in which 1 
liave lived all my life has lost none of its warmth and 
brightness. I know I am a girl in a thousand for good 
fortune, and that 1 ought to be very grateful to Providence 
for all my blessings. 

As I have failed in all my attempts to write a novel, I 
mean to make this journal the book of my life, and to put 
all of my thoughts and all my fancies into it. I shall de- 
scribe things as vividly as ever I can, so that when 1 am an 
old woman 1 can look back upon the history of my life, 
and find my youth still fresh and bright in these pages. 

Let me record the great event which has made so marked 
a change in my mother's life— her second marriage. It is 
a very curious sensation for a girl to stand by and see her 
mother married. It seemed to me almost as if time had 
gone backward, and mother were a girl again standing on 
the threshold of life. 

Uncle Ambrose was a most devoted lover, and would 


88 


WHOSE WAS THE HAHD ? 


hardly let my mother out of sight during their very short 
courtship. When mother accepted him 1 knew that a 
short enagement was very far from her thouglits. Grati- 
tude prevailed with her, and rather than lose so valued a 
friend she consented to take him as a husband; but when 
she gave that consent last July, she certainly had no idea 
of marrying him early in September. 

However, those grave, placid people are much more 
persistent than impetuous characters, like my beloved fa- 
ther, for instance; and Uncle Ambrose contrived to talk 
my dear one into an almost immediate marriage. Of 
course there was not the least reason why they should de- 
lay their wedding, for as both are rich there could be no 
question of ways and means, and as neither of them is 
young, it might seem a pity to lose time. Nor is mother 
the kind of person to waste six months upon the 2 )repara- 
tioii of a trousseau. She is always charmingly dressed, 
though it is only within the last year or two that she has 
consented to wear anything but black; and her wardrobe 
is full of beautiful things — so it would be mere idle vanity 
to wait for a heap of new clothes to be made, and during 
that delay to lose the beauty of the autumn for her honey- 
moon tour. 

It was decided at the very first discussion of the honey- 
moon that I was to travel with them after the first week, 
which they were to spend very quietly together at Folke- 
stone, just to get used to the idea of being all in all to each 
other. A great many places were proposed and discussed, 
and finally it was settled that we should spend the autumn 
in Switzerland, and go on to Italy in the beginning of the 
winter. 

Where do you think we are going to spend the winter, 
dear diary? In what particular city among all the cities 
of the world is our home to be? It is like a dream. I turn 
giddy at the very thought of it. We are to winter in 
Venice. We are to live within a stone’s-throw of the 
Doge’s Palace and the Lion’s Mouth. I am to see the 
Bridge of Sighs so often, going backward and forward in 
my gondola, that I shall get to think no more of it than I 
do of Lamford Lock. Yes, it is enough to turn any girl 
giddy. 

I want to preserve all the details of that wonderful day 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


80 


— my mother’s weddiug-chiy. It was a perfect morniDg-— 
as lovely a day as there had been all through the summer, 
which ought to have been over, but which was just then in 
its prime, for that first week of September was hotter and 
brighter than July. The dear old church, and the grave- 
yard where father lies, and the village, and the river were 
basking in a faint haze of heat, which hung over all things 
like a bridal veil. Mother and I drove to church together, 
she very pale, and with a distressed look about her beauti- 
ful mouth, which made me feel sorry I had not begged 
and prayed her not to marry again; for I felt that her 
heart was with her first love, lying in his grave under the 
willow, and not with the man who was so soon to be called 
her husband. 

She looked lovely, in spite of her marble whiteness — 
lovely, but not like a bride. Her soft fawn-colored silk 
gown harmonized with her rich brown hair, and became 
her admirably. So did the little fawn-colored bojiiiet with 
a bunch of corn-flowers. She was dressed for the journey 
to Folkestone, where they were to arrive in time for din- 
ner. There were no wedding guests, except Aunt Emily 
and her husband, my cousins, the Eeardon girls, the vicar 
and his wife, and good old Mr. Melladew, my father’s law- 
yer. 1 carried mother’s sunshade, and I was to hold her 
gloves while she was being married! 

Everything had been kept so quiet, thanks to the vicar, 
that very few people in the neighborhood knew that moth- 
er and Mr. Arden were going to be married, and only about 
half a dozen knew that this was their wedding-day, so the 
church was almost empty. There were no school-children 
to strew flowers. There was nothing in their pathway as 
they left the church but the sunshine, and the shadows of 
the old yew branches that trembled across the path. I 
think 1 like that utter simplicity better than what people 
call a picturesque wedding. There was just one thing out 
of the common in the whole ceremony. We have a fine 
old organ at Lamford, an organ built in the reign of 
George the Second, but we have a very poor organist. 
Great therefore was my amazement to hear a “ Gloria ” of 
Mozart’s played by a master hand as we walked up the 
nave; and when mother and her new husband came out of 
the vestry, arm in arm, the same master hand attacked the 
opening chords of Mendelssohn’s “ Wedding March ” with 


90 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


a power which must have startled and thrilled everybody 
in the church, as it startled and thrilled me. 

‘‘ Whoever that was, it wasn^t Mr. Parkins,’^ I said to 
Cyril, as he handed me into the second carriage — Mr. and 
Mrs. Arden — oh, how strange it seems to write it— having 
gone away in the first. 

“ It was not Mr. Parkins. It was Mr. Daventry, the 
organist of New, an old friend of my father's.'’’ 

“ What brought him to Lamford?” 

“ PViendship. My father asked him to give us a touch 
of his quality upon this particular day. He knows your 
mother is fanatica ijer la mxmca, and he wanted to please 
her.” 

“ I call that a very delicate attention,” said I, delighted. 

“ Do you, child?” exclaimed Cyril, in a scornful way. 
“ Perhaps you don’t know that if it would please your 
mother for him to cut his heart out, he would pay her that 
delicate attention just as willingly as this.” 

“ You are not jealous, are you, Cyril?” 

We had the carriage to ourselves by an accident. Bea- 
trice was to have gone with us, but had arrived at the 
church door in a state of bewilderment, and had got into 
the landau with Aunt Emily, Mrs. Reardon, and my cous- 
in Flora, who grumbled all the rest of the day at having 
her frock crushed by overcrowding. 

“Jealous!” exclaimed Cyril; “no, I am not jealous, 
and I admire my new mother ”— how ready he was with 
that sacred name — “ almost as much as my father does. 
But I can’t help pitying any man as deep in love as my fa- 
ther. It is a speclacle of human weakness which, being 
luirnan, one must pity and deplore, lest the same thing 
should happen to one’s self.” 

“ I hope they will both be happy,” said I. “I adore 
my mother, and I love Uncle Ambrose, but I would rather 
have gone on caring for them in the old quiet way, and 
have kept my mother all to myself.” 

“ Egotistical puss,” said Cyril. “ Do you know, Daisy, 
that you have the egotistical nose — not a bad nose in its 
way, but speaking volumes for the character of the nose. 
A pert nose — straight and delicate in line, but with just 
that upward tilt which means vanity and self-conscious- 
ness.” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


91 


“ 1 suppose now you are a kind of brother you are going 
to be rude to me/^ said 1. 

“ Decidedly. I mean to take every fraternal privilege/’ 
answered he. 

And then, without a word of warning, he kissed me. 

I was desperately angry. 

“ That is, a fraternal privilege which you will please to 
forego in the future,” I said. “ 1 adopted your father for 
my uncle when you were a small school-boy, but I never 
adopted you. And in our enlightened age no one supposes 
that you are any more my brother because your father has 
married my mother than you were yesterday when they 
were only engaged. ” 

“ But just now you said 1 was your brother. What an 
inconsistent girl you are.” 

“ I said a kind of brother.” 

‘‘Not the real thing. Very well, Daisy, I hope you may 
never want to put me upon the fraternal level. I can as- 
sure you that 1 don’t desire it.” 

This was so rude on his part that I lost my temper alto- 
gether. 

“ You are a smug,” I said. 

I trembled when I had uttered that awful word, expect- 
ing that he would want to annihilate me, but he only 
laughed, which was worse. 

“ I am getting behind the scenes,” he said; “ and my 
first discovery is a vixen in the family.” 

We are at home by this time, and went in to luncheon. 

It was not a very gay feast, though Uncle Ambrose 
looked intensely happy. I had been surprised by his ap- 
pearance as he stood beside my mother at (he altar. 

He had been gradually changing for the better in his 
looks and bearing ever since he was engaged, but on his 
wedding-day the transformation seemed to have completed 
itself. He who used to stoop now carried himself with an 
erect and noble air. His clear blue eyes seemed to have 
more color in them; and, oh! there was such a look of 
happiness in every line of his face. 

Then, as for his clothes, he who used to wear a coat that 
was almost disgracefully shabby was now dressed to perfec- 
tion, neither too yomig nor too old. I really felt proud of 
Uncle Ambrose as 1 watched him leave the church with my 
mother on his arm, J^nd later, when we were all clustered 


92 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


at the gate to see them start for their honey-moon. And 
then, as he bade me good-bye, I could but think of that 
other parting, seven years ago — the parting which meant 
forever. 

The carriage drove away, with one of my shoes flying 
after it, thrown by Cyril, who has a great reputation for 
throwing the hammer, and who threw my poor little bronze 
slipper so as to lodge it between the carriage and the lamp, 
like a decoration. I had to hop back to the hall, which 
seemed so ridiculous that, while I was ready to cry at part- 
ing with my mother, the absurdity of the thing made me 
laugh instead, and then, three minutes afterward, the 
laughter and tears got mixed and 1 was sobbing hysterically 
on Cyrirs shoulder. 

Aunt Emily took me away from him, and scolded me 
for being so foolish as to make such a fuss for such a brief 
parting. 

“You will see your mother again in a week, you silly 
child, she said; “ one would think she was going to Aus- 
tralia. Why, my girls and 1 are sometimes parted for six 
or eight weeks at a tinie.’^ 

“But they are used to it,^’ I answered, as indeed they 
are, poor things, and have been from their infancy. “ It’s 
different with mother and me. We have never lived 
apart. 

I ran upstairs as soon as I could slip away from the 
family party, and had a comfortable cry in my own room, 
while Flora and Dora played tennis with Cyril and Bea- 
trice. They weie all very noisy, so 1 suppose they were 
enjoying themselves. Even though I was so miserable I 
couldn’t help noticing the difference between Beatrice’s 
country noise and Flo and Do’s London noise. My cous- 
ins are what people call stylish girls, and have a dashing, 
off-hand way of talking and doing everything. Beatrice, 
on the other hand, has a kind of lumbering vivacity, which 
1 hope it is not ill-natured to compare with a brewer’s 
horse in high spirits. 

Aunt Emily and the cousins were installed at Fiver 
Lawn for a week, and at the end of that week aunt was to 
take me to Folkestone to join mother and her new hus- 
band, and from Folkestone we were to start for Switzer- 
land. 

Oh, how I counted the hours in that week, and how it 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


93 


seemed to me as if those seven days and nights would never 
come to an end! How I sickened of tennis and boating, 
and of all the things which amused my cousins! How 1 
sickened even of Cyril, who used to come across from the 
cottage at all hours, and who devoted himself to Flora and 
Dora, and was very kind in asking me to join in their boat- 
ing excursions up or down the river. They used to start 
soon after breakfast with a well-filled picnic basket, and 
land at any spot they fancied, and eat their lunch in some 
picturesque corner, and they came home to afternoon tea 
sunburned to a degree that horrified Aunt Emily. 

“ Are you aware that your complexions will never re- 
cover from such treatment as this?^^ she asked them, 
solemnly. 

Cyril was to start for his travels on the day I set out 
upon mine. He was going to the Norwegian fjords to fish 
for salmon. 1 can not understand the rage some people 
have for chilly, half-civilized countries, when there are all 
the glories and grandeur of the south waiting to be looked 
at. Imagine anybody preferring Norway to Venice! Cyril 
does. Venice is so triste^ he said. And then he promised 
me that if I were a very good little girl, and sent him a 
nice long gossiping letter every week, he would go to 
Venice just to see if I were dying of too much Paul Vero- 
nese. 

“You will be dosed with that fellow and his school,’^ he 
said; “ made to look up at ceilings till your eyes and your 
neck ache. If people would only let me alone in foreign 
cities traveling would not be half such a trial as it is; but 
there is always the intelligent companion bent upon im- 
proving one’s mind.’’ 

Cyril has grown hlase from having been allowed to go 
wherever he chose. He has seen all that is best worth 
seeing in Europe, and a sunny corner of Africa into the 
bargain. He has traveled all through Greece, and thinks 
no more of Marathon than I do of Maidenhead. 1 some- 
times think it has been a misfortune for him to have so 
much money, and that he svould be ever so much nicer if 
Uncle Ambrose had never come into his fortune. He is 
kind and generous and high-spirited; but he thinks just a 
little too much of himself, and he seems to think the world 
is hardly good enough for him to live in. 

Mother was at the station to meet me When the train 


94 


WHOSE AVAS THE HAHD ? 


went slowly over the house-tops into Folkestone. How 
young and luindsonie she looked in her dark-brown tailor 
gown and neat brown liat, and what a moment of bliss it 
was for me when she clasped my hands and gave me one 
discreet little kiss. 

“ Are you happy, mother, and are you still fond of me?^’ 
I asked her, in a breath. 

“Yes, to both foolish questions. See, Daisy, have you 
not a word for — 

She stopped, embarrassed, looking at her husband, who 
came up at this moment, after having sent oft' his servant 
to help my maid with the luggage. 

“ Yes, I have plenty of words for Uncle Ambrose,’^ I 
said, giving him both my hands. “ Gracious, what a grand 
person you have grown, and ever so many years younger; 
I think you must have concocted one of those wonderful 
philters that 1 have read about in Horace.’’ 

“ Yes, Daisy, I have drunk of a philter, but not one of 
those nasty compounds which wicked witches produce. My 
phlter has been happiness.” 

“ 1 really half suspect you are a second Doctor Faustus, 
and that you have made a dreadful bargain with the 
fiend,” said I. 

“ If 1 had, Daisy, 1 don’t think my consciousness of the 
compact would prevent my being happy,” he answered, 
smiling at me. 

We went straight from the station to the boat, only a few 
yards, and then we sailed across a summery sea, and then 
came a long hot journey — for though we had left cool 
weather in England, there was a sultry atmosphere on the 
other side of the Channel. 

We were in Paris in time for an eight-o’clock dinner, 
and I sat between mother and Uncle Ambrose in one of 
the prettiest private sitting-rooms in the Continental Hotel, 
with wide-open windows facing the big lamplit square, and 
the fountains and statues, and the Champs Elysees all in a 
glittering haze of summer mist mixed with lamp-light, and 
over all arched the great purple sky flashing with stars so 
brilliant and so large that they seemed hanging just above 
our heads. 

They both seemed glad to have me with them; they both 
seemed fond of me. After dinner Uncle Ambrose took 
me for a walk, and showed me Paris by lamp-light, wliilo 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


95 


mother sat and rested, and read the last new book which 
he had bought for her at the station. There never was a 
happier girl than I w'as that balmy September night, hang- 
ing on to Uncle Ambrose’s arm and devouring Paris with 
my e 3 "es. We walked as far as Notre Dame, and stood in 
the quiet open space looking up at the great dusky towers, 
so grand, so old, each a page of history carved in stone. 

He told me all about the building of that mighty cathe- 
dral, and how it had slowly risen from its foundations, and 
grown and ripened into beauty, like a great oak in the 
heart of the forest, almost as gradually, almost as quietly. 
And then we looked at the river, and then we walked slow- 
ly back to the hotel. 

I felt so happy when I went in, but the look at my 
mother’s face as she sat staring straight before her in the 
lamp-light dashed all my happiness. 

“ Clara!” cried Uncle Ambrose. “ What is the mat- 
ter?” 

She pointed to the French novel she had been reading, 
which lay open on the table. 

“ How could you choose such a book as that for me?” 
she asked, reproachfully. 

“ I choose the book because it has made a great success 
in Paris. See, ninety-ninth thousand! Isn’t that a guar- 
antee that the story is worth reading?” 

“ It is a revolting story — the story of a murder — in a 
low lodging-house in the cite — a murder that was never- 
avenged.” 

” Don’t you like murder stories?” 1 asked. “ J enjoy 
a murder if it is really a good one — a mysterious murder, 
which keeps the reader wondering all through the book!” 

“ Never talk in that strain, Daisy, unless you want to 
disgust me,” answered mother, more sternly than 1 ever 
remembered her to have spoken to me in her life. ” Do 
you think a crime which desolates a home and wrecks a life 
— or many lives— is a thing to be talked of in that spirit?” 

“ Oh, but poets and dramatists would be poor creatures 
unless they were able to describe great criminals. Look at 
Macbeth, for instance. Some critics call that the finest of 
all Shakespeare’s plays, and I really think it is iny first 
favorite among them all.” 

‘‘ Stop, Daisy,” said Uncle Ambrose, with his hand upon 
my shoulder, “ Don’t you see that your mother is tired 


96 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


and nervous? It is past eleven, and we are to do a great 
deal of sight-seeing to-morrow. You had better bid us 
good-night. 

1 kissed the poor pale face, which had changed so sadly 
since dinner-time, and went off to my room, where my 
maid was waiting for me. 

1 had shared mother^s maid until now, but now I have 
the undivided service of my good old nurse, who has been 
gradually educating herself into a lady^s-maid, and who 
has nothing to do except look after my wardrobe and 
brush my hair. 

My head was a little troubled as I laid it on my strange 
pillow, troubled about my mother’s trouble, which seemed 
more than the occasion accounted for. If I had known 
then what I know now I should have understood that look 
of horror in her eyes as she lifted them in her husband’s 
face while she pointed to the open book. 

Oh, what a blessing it was not to know, and how I wish 
Providence had suffered me to remain in happy ignorance, 
as my mother wished. But there are always officious peo- 
ple in the world to take things out of the hands of Provi- 
dence; or, at least, it seems so. 

We had been nearly a month in Switzerland, moving 
quietly from place to place and thoroughly enjoying the 
beauty of everything, all the more because of Uncle Am- 
brose, who was like a walking encyclopaedia, telling me all 
I wanted to know about everything and everybody, talking 
most delightfully about Voltaire, Kousseau, Gibbon, and 
all the Lake Leman poets and philosophers, and quoting 
whole pages of Tyndall on the Alps and Glaciers. 

My dear one had no more nervous fits after that night 
in Paris; she seemed thoroughly happy, and pleased with 
my enjoyment of everything. Sometimes a shade of mel- 
ancholy would creep over her at the thought of years ago 
when she had been in these places with my father, and 
there were days when she had a listless air, as if she were 
weary of life, in spite of the love that watched her footsteps 
and wrapped her round like an atmosphere. I wonder if 
all husbands are like Uncle Ambrose. There is an inten- 
sity in his devotion to my mother which shows itself in 
every act of his daily life; and yet his affection is never in- 
trusive, it never touches the ridiculous. I think very few 


WHOSE WAS THE ITANH ? 


97 


people afc the hotels where we stopped guessed that they 
were a honey-mooii (jouple. Mother is silent and reserved 
among strangers, and Uncle Ambrose has always the 
thoughtful air of a student. At the National, at Geneva, 
there were some Oxford men who were very much im- 
pressed when they found out who he was. I heard them 
talking about his books one evening in the reading-room 
when 1 was looking through the Tauchnitz novels. I felt 
quite proud to think that the man they were praising was 
the man who had stooped from his high estate to educate 
me. 

I wonder whether it was for mother’s sake — whether he 
worshiped her from the very beginning, in my dear fa- 
ther’s life-time, with the same worship that he has for her 
now — a hopeless, distant love in those days, without ex- 
pectation or thought of reward. I can but think that it 
may have been so, that no lessor feeling would have in- 
duced so learned a man to demote himself to the training 
of an ignorant little girl. 

It was at Lucerne that the secret of my father’s death 
was revealed to me. It happened only the day before yes- 
terday, and yet I feel as if it was ages ago. I have not had 
one happy moment since, and yet I have beeii obliged to 
appear as happy as ever, for fear my mother should find 
out what I am brooding upon, and be reminded of the one 
great sorrow of her life. Oh, what a sorrow it must have 
been! What an awful haunting memory! It is wojider- 
ful to me that she could ever smile again, or take any 
pleasure in life, or think of anything except that one dread- 
ful fact. 

I know now how my father died — why he was snatched 
away from us without an hour’s warning. I know that he 
was cruelly murdered by an unknown hand, and that his 
murderer is walking about the earth at this day, undiscov- 
ered and unpunished, unless God’s vengeance has fallen 
upon the wretch in some mysterious way that we know 
not. 

We were at the Schweitzerhoff, at Lucerne. The 
W'eather was lovely, and we had spent the day on the- lake, 
and in the evening after dinner we all went out to the 
portico in front of the hotel. There were some Tyrolese 
musicians playing under the trees by the lake, and I 


98 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


thought of that curious story of ToJstoPs, of the poor wan- 
dering musician aud the erutd people at the Schweitzerhotf, 
who listened and applauded but never gave him a s6u. 
And then the poor creature went strolling about the town, 
where the teller of the story followed him, to take him 
back to the Schweitzerhotf and treat him to champagne, 
much to the indignation of the com]3any in the cotfee- 
room. 

1 reminded Uncle Ambrose of Tolstoi’s story, which we 
had read together. We were sitting in the deep shadow of 
the portico, looking out at the moonlit quay, and listening 
to the Tyrolese musicians, one of them playing upon the 
Streich-zither while the others sung. 

Presently Uncle Ambrose and my mother went for a 
turn on the quay, leaving me sitting in my dark corner at 
the back of the colonnade. They asked me to go with 
them, but I had walked and run about a good deal at Alt- 
dorf and b liiellen, and I told mother 1 was tired and would 
rather stay where I was. 

I was sitting in a dark corner, enjoying tlie music, and 
unobserved by anybody. There were two rows of 2 :>eople 
in front of me. 

“ Do you know who she is?” asked a man sitting very 
near me, as my mother moved slowly away on her hus- 
band’s arm. 

“Her name is Arden — a very striking woman, is she 
not?” returned his companion. 

“ Decidedly handsome! But don’t you know who she 
is?” 

“ I only know that the man she is walking with is her 
husband, and that their name is Arden. 1 saw it in the 
visitors’ book this morning.” 

“ Didn’t you notice another name bracketed with it? I 
did. ” 

“ What name?” 

“Miss llatrell, the lady’s daughter. She is traveling 
with her mother and her step-father. Mr. and Mrs. Arden 
have only been married a month. I saw the marriage in 
the ^ Times.’” 

“ But what about Miss llatrell?” 

“Do you mean to say the name has no association in 
your mind?” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“ Not the slightest. 1 never knew any Ilatrells, so far 
as I can remember. 

“ Perhaps not, but I don’t think you can have forgotten 
tlie mysterious murder in Denmark Street, St. Giles’, 
which everybody talked about six or seven years ago. The 
mail murdered was a country gentleman who had gone up 
to London to cash a big check in order to pay for an estate 
ke was buying. He cashed the check in Pall Mall, but he 
never reached Lincoln’s Inn Fields with the money. He 
was intercepted on his way and lured to a lodging-house in 
Denmark Street, where he was found next day stabbed and 
plundered by an unknown hand. It was one of those mur- 
ders which baffle all the endeavors of the police and bring 
discredit upon the force.” 

” Yes, I have a faint recollection of the affair — the Den- 
mark Street Mjstery, 1 think they called it. I had utterly 
forgotten the man’s name. Do you say that this Miss 
Hatrell is a relation of the murdered man?” 

“ Only his daughter. Mrs. Arden was his widow until a 
month ago, when she married the man who is walking with 
her over there in the moonlight. I have some friends at 
Henley who talk about her. She has a place between 
Henley and Reading, where she has lived in retirement 
since her husband’s murder.” 

“ Was it never known who murdered him?” 

” Never. The motive was plunder, of course. The 
murderer got clean off with his booty, in the form of Bank 
of England notes, which were cashed in the south of 
France before the bankers in that part of the world had 
heard of the crime. The murderer got a start of eighteen 
hours or so before the crime was discovered — just margin 
enough to allow of his turning the notes into hard cash.” 

“ Were there any arrests made, or was anybody sus- 
pected?” 

” Oh, as far as that goes, there is no doubt that the man 
who committed the murder was a foreigner who took a 
room in the Denmark Street lodging-house for the express 
2 ^urpose of murder. He lured his victim there by the use 
of a woman’s name — the name of some French woman of 
whom Hatrell had been fond. He did the deed unaided, 
in the broad light of day, and then he locked the door of 
his room, and ran down-stairs and out of the house, as 
coolly as if he had gone home to fetch some implement of 


100 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


his trade and vvas only going back to his workshop. This, 
I believe, is the last that was ever seen of him.^'’ 

“ No doubt he is knocking about Europe somewhere/^ 
answered the other man. “ Who knows? He may bo 
here to-night. The Schweitzerhotf would be a capital re- 
sort for a man who was anted by the police. The very 
publicity of the hotel would be his safeguard.^' 

I sat there cold and trembling while they talked, oh, so 
indifferently, as if it mattered nothing that an adored hus- 
band and father should be lured away to some horrid den 
and cruelly murdered. And then the dear face came back 
to me in all its brightness— the happy smile — the candid 
gray eyes. The loved voice sounded again in my ears, just 
as if my father had that instant called to me from the gar- 
den. Oh, how could my mother get over such a blow as 
that? The wonder was not that she had grieved dreadful- 
ly, but that she had ever ceased to grieve. And nothing 
had been done. His death was unavenged, his murderer 
was walking about the world unpunished. Yes, as that 
man said, he might be in Lucerne to-night. 

I did not cry out, or faint, or do anything to create a 
disturbance. For a minute or so there was a rushing in 
my ears, and the pillars of the portico seemed to rock, and 
then my head grew cool and clear again. But I felt that 
I could not go on sitting quietly there, and I started up 
and asked one of the men who had talked about my father 
to make way for me, and I broke through the double range 
of sitters somehow, and ran down the- steps and away to- 
ward the cathedral, and then up the hill at the back of the 
hotel. 1 wanted to get away from the crowd, from my 
mother and Uncle Ambrose, from every one and every- 
thing, just to be alone with my thoughts of my dear dead 
father. 

The narrow path up which 1 went to the top of the hill 
was quite deserted at this time. I stood on the hill-top 
alone, looking down at the lighted city, so picturesque in 
its stillness, the quaint old roofs and gables, and market 
squares and narrow street, which it had been such a delight 
to explore with Uncle Ambrose only yesterday, but which 
I looked at now with dull, unseeing eyes. Pilatus lifted 
his snow-crowned head above the further shore of the lake, 
and over all there was the clear light of the moon, clear 
yet soft, leaving great gaps of densest shadow, black 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


101 


depths where the lamps twinkled here and there, singly or 
in clusters of warm red light, which seemed a relief after 
the coldness of the moon and stars. 

I had noticed all these things the night before, when 1 
stood in the same spot with Uncle Ambrose. 1 noticed 
them mechanically to-night, while my heart beat loud and 
fast, with a passionate longing to do something, weak, in- 
experienced girl as I was, that should slowly, laboriously, 
surely lead to the discovery and the punishment of my fa- 
ther’s murderer. 

“ How is it,” 1 asked myself, “ that one murderer 
escapes, and that another, who seems to leave but the 
slightest indications to lead to discovery, is arrested within 
a week of his crime? What is it that makes the chances 
of criminals so uneven, and how is it that the police, who 
in some cases seem to exercise a superhuman intelligence, 
seem in other cases helpless and blundering almost to the 
verge of idiocy?” 

I had heard this question discussed a great deal within 
the last few weeks in relation to a mysterious murder in 
Liverpool, and I had taken an intense interest in the sub- 
ject; a morbid interest. Uncle Ambrose told me, when I 
talked to him about it. He reproved me for occupying 
my mind with a ghastly story. I reminded him that the 
story of this murder was no more ghastly than the story 
of Agamemnon’s murder, or of the string of murders in 
“ Macbeth,” and that one might as well be interested in 
real horrors as in fiction. Little did I think then that 
there would come a day when I should have a stronger rea- 
son for brooding upon this ghastly subject. 

I stayed on the hill a long time, forgetting everything 
except the horror that had been made known to me that 
night — forgetting most of all that my absence would alarm 
piy mother. I was startled at last by the cathedral clock, 
which began to strike the hour. 1 counted the strokes, 
and found that it was eleven o’clock. I had been away 
from the hotel more than an hour. 

1 hurried back, and on the way met Uncle Ambrose, 
who scolded me for going out alone at such a late hour. 

“ Your mother has been anxious and agitated about you, 
Daisy,” he said; “ how came so wise a person to do such 
a foolish thing?” ^ 

“ I don’t know — I foj-got,” 1 said. 


m 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“ Where have you been all this time?’^ 

“ On the hill up there looking down at the town/^ 

“ My dear Daisy, how could you forget that your mother 
would be alarmed at your disappearance?’’' . 

I forgot everything. ” 

And then 1 told him what I had heard an hour ago in 
the portico. I asked him why the cruel truth had been 
kept from me during all those years? I looked at his face 
in the moonlight and saw more trouble there than 1 had 
ever seen in my life before. 

“ It would have been cruel to tell you the truth, Daisy. 
The greatest curse of life is the existence of idle chatterers, 
who must always be babbling about other people’s business. 
If wishes could bear fruit, it would be bad for those men 
you overheard to-night.” 

I had never heard such anger in his voice as I heard 
then. 

“ God only knows the pains your mother and 1 have 
taken to keep this trouble from you,” he said. ” We have 
pledged all who knew you and were about you to silence. 
We have hedged you round with precautions. And yet, in 
one unlucky minute, the prurient gossip of a wonder-monger 
frustrates all our care. ” 

“ I am glad I know,” I answered. “ Do you think I 
wanted to live in a fool’s paradise —to think that my father 
died peacefully in the arms of a friend, when he was bru- 
tally murdered? You don’c know how I loved him, or 
you w'ould know better than that.” 

I was angry in my turn — and now tears came, the first 
which I had shed since I heard the story of my father’s 
death — tears of mingled anger and grief. I seized Uncle 
Ambrose by the arm, I was almost beside myself. 

“You were his friend,” I said, “his closest friend, 
almost like a brother! Did you do nothing to avenge his 
death? Nothing, nothing?” 

“ I did all that mortal man could do, Daisy. I stimu- 
lated the police to action by every means in my power. I 
did not rest till all that could be done had been done. It 
was in concert with me that your mother offered a reward 
large enough to set all Scotland Yard on the alert. If (he 
murderer escaped, bo assured it was not because his pur- 
suers were careless or indifferent. Had he been a prince 


WHOSE WAS THE HA^D ? 103 

of the blood royal the endeavor to solve the mystery of his 
death could not have been more intense than it was/' 

“What idiots the detective police must be/' 1 ex- 
claimed. 

“ No, they are nbt idiots, Daisy, though it is the fashion 
to call them so when a great criminal evades pursuit. 
There are some uncommonly clever men among them, and 
there are some uncommonly clever captures and discoveries 
made by them. But now and then they have to deal with 
a criminal who is both clever and lucky, and that was the 
case with the wretch who murdered your father." 

“ Tell me all about his death — every detail," I said. 

“What good will it do for you to know, Daisy?" he 
asked in his pleading voice; just as he used to talk to me 
years ago when I was a child, and inclined to be naughty. 
“ For God's sake, my dear girl, try to forget all you heard 
to-night. Think of your father only as you have thought 
of him hitherto, as one who was taken from you in the 
flower of his years, and who sleeps quietly in his grave, 
honored, loved, and lamented. The manner of his death 
makes little difference. It was swift and sudden, a merci- 
ful death — without death-bed horrors, or prolonged pain. 
It must have been an almost instantaneous death. " 

“You know all about it, and I want to know, too," I 
answered. “ If you won't tell me I shall find out the 
truth for myself. I know the date of my father's death, 
and 1 have only to get the newspapers for the following 
days, and I shall learn all that can be learned about his 
murderer, and the circumstances of his death." 

“ You are obstinate and foolish, Daisy," he said. “ It 
would be far wiser to blot the horror of the past out of 
your mind forever. Your father's sleep is just as sweet 
as if he had perished by the slow and painful decay which 
darkens the end of life when men live to what is called a 
good old age. A good old age~as if age and decay could 
ever be good! I wonder at your want of philosophy. I 
thought I had trained my pupil better, and that whenever 
you should come to know the worst, your own calm reason 
would show you that death by assassination is no more 
dreadful than any other form of death." 

“ It is more dreadful — infinitely more dreadful— for it 
robbed me of my beloved father. He would be with us 
now — he might be with us for long years to come — but for 


104 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


the wretch who killed him. It is easy for you to preach 
resignation, for you have been the gainer by his death. 

I was too angry to think of the cruelty of my words, or 
of my base ingratitude toward the truest and dearest friend 
I have in the world, after my mother. 1 could think of 
nothing but my father’s hard fate, and my most bitter loss. 

“ That will do, Daisy,” said Uncle Ambrose, in a voice 
that sounded like a stranger’s; “ so long as you and 1 live 
you can never say anything more cruel than that.” 

“ Or more ungrateful,” I cried, throwing myself into his 
arms. “ 1 am a wretch, a thankless wretch.” 

He soothed and comforted me, assuring me of his for- 
giveness. He could make every allowance for a heart so 
tried as mine. Yes, it was a hard thing to have lost so 
dear a father, so good a man. , 

“ For God’s sake don’t think that 1 failed in regard for 
your father,” he said, “ although our ideas of life were so 
different — he all action and vivacity, I dreamy and self- 
contained — he was the best friend I ever had, the man I 
liked best in the world. Yes, I have gained by his un- 
timely death, gained a pearl beyond price, the one dream 
and desire of my life. I can never palter with facts there, 
Daisy. You and I must understand each other and believe 
in each other if I am to stand in a father’s place for i:ny 
dear pupil and friend. There shall be no sophistication 
on my part. I have told you why your mother and 1 have 
labored to keep the manner of yonr father’s death hidden 
from you; but now you have discovered so much I will not 
stand in the way of your knowing all, since it is your 
wish—” 

“ It is my wish — my most ardent wish.” 

‘‘ Very well. When we go back to England I will give 
yon the report of the inquest, which will tell yqu every de- 
tail. I will give you a collection of leading m^ficles vvhich 
will show you how easy it is to speculate and conjecture 
and theorize about a crime, and how very difficult it may 
be to find the criminal. 1 have all these papers for you to 
•read, and you shall be allowed to read them, but under 
protest. I know that it is not well for you to brood upoji 
that sad event. ” 

“ I shall brood less, nerhaps, when I know more,” 1 told 
him. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


105 


And then he implored me to say nothing to my mother 
about this dreadful past, which had tried her so terribly. 

“ God knows what would happen if her sorrow were to 
be brought too vividly back to her by any display of emo- 
tion upon your part,^’ he said. “She must never be 
allowed to talk about that dreadful time. Her life and 
her reason were both in danger — child as you were; you 
must have seen what a wreck; she was when you went home 
from Westgate — you must have known how slow she was 
to recover health and spirits.’’ 

I promised him that come what might I would never 
afflict my mother by any allusion to my father’s death, and 
then once more 1 pleaded for pardon for my foolish and 
thankless speech. 

“ My child, how can 1 be angry with you?” he said, in 
his grave and gentle voice, the voice I had loved from my 
babyhood almost. “ What can be more natural than that 
you should love your father, and regret him, passionately 
and fondly. Only tell me, dear, honestly, are you sorry 
that your mother has made my life happy? Are you sorry 
that she has allowed me to stand in the place of the father 
you have lost?” 

I told him no, a thousand times no. Next to my father 
and mother he was the person I loved best upon this earth, 
and I was very glad to have him bound to me for all my 
life as my guardian and friend. 

“ There shall be no one ever nearer or dearer to me,” 1 
told him, “ but you must be Uncle Ambrose to the end. 
1 can not call you father.” 


CHAPTER IX. 
daisy’s diary in MILAN. 

Lucernh was very gray and dim when we bade it good- 
bye yesterday morning, the last day of November; but 
when we had climbed nearer the snow peaks the sun shone 
out over the beautiful white world above us and the dark 
lake below, and the rest of the journey to the mouth of the 
great tunnel was like a journey in fairy-land. What could 
be more exquisite than to go winding upward and upward 
into the great heart of the mountain, and to look down on 
village roofs, and windifig streamlets, and bridges, and 
rocky gorges, and vineyards and gardens, and church towers. 


106 


WHOSE WAS THE HA HD ? 


ever so far below the wonderful iron road that was taking 
us toward the skies. I felt so sorry when that part of 
our journey was over, and though 1 lofiged to find out 
what Italy was like I felt very sad as I sat at the snug 
round table in the little station, the last Swiss statioi], and 
sipped a farewell cup of coffee with mother and Uncle 
Ambrose. 

It was a disappointment after leaving: sunshine and blue 
skies above the Swiss snow peaks to find Italy gray and 
rainy, with just that incessant drizzling rain which one has 
known fi-om one’s childhood as the mark of a hopeless wet 
day, and which has been politely called a Scotch mist. Of 
all the things I had thought to meet with in Italy, a Scotch 
mist was the last; but there it was, and nothing would 
have reconciled me to the grayness and the rain except the 
red cotton umbrellas, which were delightful, and which 
made me feel I was in Italy. 

Next to the red umbrella, as an Italian institution, came 
the herceau, the verdant colonnade made by vines trained' 
over cane or wire, leafy arcades which I saw in every gar- 
den, and in the front of the humblest houses — sometimes 
over the tops of the houses, sometimes forming a loggia on 
the first floor. The vine leaves were turning yellow and 
red with the touch of autumn, but they were still verdant 
enough for beauty. The bell tower in every village church 
was another sign that we were iii Italy; and then by and 
by we came upon the great dark-blue lake lying in the 
bosom of the gray mist-wreathed hills, and mother and I 
agreed lhat but for the bell towers, the herceaux, and the 
red umbrellas of the peasantry, we might have fancied we 
were in the Trossachs. • 

And so, as Mr. Pepys says, to Milan, where we steamed 
into a great metropolitan-looking terminus, where Cyril 
stood waiting for us on the platform in the glare of the 
electric light. 

He had grown tired of the north, and had written to his 
father to propose joining us on our journey to Venice, and 
with this intention he has made his way down to Milan, 
amusing himself here and there as he came, exploring odd 
nooks and out-of-the-way spots. 

He was looking in high health and very happy, I thought, * 
as he stood smiling at us in the electric light. 

“ Well,' wee modest flower,” he said, addressing me in his 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


107 


usual grand manner, after he had shaken hands with mother 
and Uncle Ambrose. “ Welcome to the ancient kingdom 
of Lombardy. I wonder if you are as enraptured with 
Italy as you were before your foot had ever touched the 
soil. I^m afraid upon such an evening as this you’ll lind 
Milan uncommonly like Glasgow.” 

He took us to a fine roomy landau which he had engaged 
for us, and we left the man and the maids to look after the 
luggage, and drove off to the Hotel de la Ville, in a nar- 
rowish, busy-looking st reet that might have been Fleet Street 
or the Strand for anything distinctive that I could see in it 
under that gray rainy atmosphere. Yes, there was one 
superiority over Fleet Street, in spite of the rain and the mud, 
and that was the electric light, which filled all the city of 
Milan with its clear silvery radiance, so that the night was 
like unto the day. 

The head waiter at the hotel told us that there had been 
three weeks'* rain, and I found afterward that this fertile 
plain of Lombardy, which 1 am told is very lovely in the 
spring, owes its chief beauty to the damp and cloudy win- 
ter climate. 

At any rate I am in Italy, and the very idea is full of 
delight. 1 kept telling myself yesterday evening that this 
was Italy, and trying to cheat myself into brief forgetful- 
ness of the dreadful story on which my mind had been fixed 
ever since that night at Lucerne. It was to be only brief 
forgetfulness, for 1 had resolved to confide all my troubles 
to Cyril, to whom I could talk freely. 

Oh, what a painful effort it had cost me to keep my 
feelings hidden from the dear mother with whom till now 
I had shared every thought and every fancy. In spite of 
my endeavor to seem happy and untroubled, she discovered 
that there was something wrong, and I had to pretend that 
young lady-like ailment, neuralgia, from which I am thank- 
ful to say I have never suffered. 1 was conscience-stricken 
at the thought of my own falsehood when I saw the dear 
mother’s anxiety. She almost insisted upon calling in a 
doctor, so I had to reassure her by a prompt recovery. I 
told her the pain was quite gone, but that the climate had 
rather a depressing effect upon my spirits. This accounted 
for my talking very little instead of talking almost inces- 
santly, and this accounted for my sitting in my corner of 


108 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


the carriage, thinking, thinking, thinking, all through 
that long railroad journey. 

1 have always liked Cyril, but 1 never felt so glad to see 
him as I felt last night at Milan. I wanted so much to 
talk to a man who knew the world, and a man to whom I 
could express myself freely, without any fear of inflicting 
an unpremeditated wound, as I had done in the case of 
Uncle Ambrose. So after dinner I asked Cyril if he would 
take me for a walk, and show me the outside of the 
cathedral; to which request he assented very good-naturedly, 
only barganing for a cigarette in the hall before we started. 
We dined in our sitting-room on the first floor, and we all 
went down into the gay-looking vestibule after dinner and 
took our coffee at a little table in the corner where we 
could look on at the people coming in and going out. 

Was mother. happier than I? Had she forgotten the dead? 
Those were two questions which I could not refrain from 
asking myself as I sat by her side last evening, our first 
evening in Italy. She looked so young and so beautiful 
last night, in her calm, reposeful attitude, as she sat slowly 
fanning herself and idly watching the shifting groups in 
the spacious vestibule. Pier rich brown brocade gown, with 
its sable collar and bordering, made her look like an old 
picture. The aristocratic-looking head, with its crown 
of dark auburn hair, rose out of the deep soft fur like a 
lily out of a cluster of leaves. Her hazel eyes seemed to 
have sunlight in their clear darkness. She looked utterly 
calm and happy; and assuredly if a husband’s devotion 
could make a wife happy her happiness was well founded. 
Such gentle deference, such chivalrous afl'ection must be 
very rare in the history of men and women, if I may judge 
by the stories of domestic misery that I have heard, and by 
the manners and customs of the few married couples I 
have known. 

There is the dear old vicar, for instance, a delightful 
being for all the world outside his vicarage, but a pesti- 
lence to his wife. There is Dr. Tysoe, always grumbling 
about his dinner, and wanting to have the cook discharged 
instantly if a joint is not correctly cooked. 

Then there is Dr. Talbot, a man in whom society de- 
lights, but who is always irritable or out of spirits at home; 
whose entrance into the drawing-room casts a cloud over 
his family, and seems palpably to chill the atmosphere. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


109 


No, in my brief experience I never saw the perfect and 
ideal husband whom we occasionally meet in a novel, till I 
saw my mother’s husband. Uncle Ambrose. 

He is not a bit like Rochester, though he has Rochester’s 
commanding intellect. He is more like a spiritualized John 
Halifax, and 1 have known him all my life, know that his 
sweet and placid temper is no honey-moon garb to be put 
off by and by. I, who have known him all my life, know 
that he is the most delightful companion, the most un- 
selfish and sympathetic friend — a man always abreast with 
every intellectual movement of the age, a man rich in re- 
sources, keenly interested in art and science, as well as in 
dry learning. 

There never was a son less like his father than Cyril. 
He is as much unlike him in temperament as he is in per- 
son. Uncle Ambrose is all thought, Cyril is all action. 
He is like my dear father in his energy and movement, as 
full of life and activity as if there were quicksilver in his 
veins. He is eager for knowledge, but he loves best the 
knowledge that comes to him from the lips of men, the 
knowledge that can be gained amidst the life and move- 
ment of the big, busy world. Cyril is not the least like 
anybody’s ideal. He would never serve as a model for the 
hero of a novel. 

Yet in spite of the absence of the poetic element, Cyril is 
very nice, and one can not help liking him. He is always 
gay and bright, although he affects to have exhausted every 
pleasure. He is the most inquisitive person 1 ever met 
with — always wanting to know everything about everybody. 

He is generally considered good-looking, indeed, some 
people insist upon calling him handsome. He has gray 
eyes in which the light sparkles and dances when he is 
amused at anything. He has curly brown hair, hair which 
curls obstinately, h^owever closely it is cropped, very pretty 
hair, hair that offers a suggestion of the poetical tempera- 
ment, which Cyril certainly does not realize. He has a 
sharp, inquisitive nose; he calls mine “ tip-tilted,” and I 
am sure his has the same upward inclination — but it is a 
very nice nose all the same, and it has no affinity to the 
snub or the pug. He is tall and slim, with moderately broad 
shoulders, and quick and active movements, and he always 
dresses well. I believe he considers himself an authority 


110 WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 

upon dress^ and he is certainly very severe upon other 
people. 

I took his arm, and we went out into the drizzling rain. 
There were a great many shops open, late as it was, and 
they looked lovely, but my mind was too full of serious 
things for me to be easily distracted. 

“ Take me first to look at the cathedral,^' I said: “ and 
then take me into some solitary place where we can talk 
quietly.^’ 

Gracious, madame, what an alarming request, he 
cried. “I think we had better get the sacristan and his 
keys, and go down into the crypt where St. Charles Bor- 
romeo lies in his silver shrine. I can not conceive any 
other place solemn enough to match the solemnity of your 
tone.’’ 

“ Don’t laugh at me, Cyril, I am very, very serious.” 

He looked down at me with a startled, inquisitive air. 

“ What is it, Daisy,” he said very sharply, almost an- 
grily, a love affair?” 

“ No, no, no. There is nothing further from my 
thoughts to-night than love.” 

“lam glad to hear it. When a young lady is an heiress, 
and something of a feather-head into the bargain, one is 
easily alarmed.” 

“ You have no right to call me feather-head, when your 
father, one of the cleverest men in Europe, has educated 
me,” I said, indignantly. 

“ My dearest child, book-learning is not wisdom,” he 
answered; “and a grain of worldly knowledge is some- 
times more useful than a pound of book-knowledge. I 
know that you 'are far in advance of the average girl in 
your acquaintance with European literature. I know that 
you have read more than some college dons, and that you 
are an excellent linguist, and altogether deeply, darkly, 
beautifully blue. But all the same, you have not learned 
the alphabet of the world in which you live. All that 
kind of knowledge has yet to come.” 

“ It is a hateful kind of knowledge,” 1 said, angrily. 

“ My child, you can’t get on without it,” he answered, 
with his superior air. 

We were in the great open place in front of the 
cathedral, by this time, and I stood breathless with won- 
der, looking up at that matchless building. I have been 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


Ill 


told since that the exterior which looked so lovely in the 
bright white light, against a background of dull gray, is 
overrich in decoration, that those innumerable statues of 
saints and martyrs, angels, and archangels, priests and 
prophets, are waste of power; but to my uneducated eye 
there was not a touch of the chisel that seemed superflu- 
ous; not a niche or pinnacle that did not seem a necessary 
part of the vast scheme of splendor. 

I told Cyril what I thought, as we walked slowly up and 
down, surveying the mighty basilica from different points 
of view; and then we crossed the square, and he took me 
through the lofty bright-looking arcade, and then into a 
quieter part of the city, beyond the great opera house and 
Leonardo's statue. Here the houses were large and pala- 
tial, and there were no more shops, and very few people 
walking about. 

“ Now, Daisy, for this confidence of yours, which is not 
about love,^' he said, kindly. 

1 want you to tell me all you know and all you think 
about my father’s murder,” 1 said. 

“ What, have they told you, then?” 

“ Nobody has told me. I overheard two men talking 
about my mother and her first husband.” 

“ And their talk revealed the secret that had been kept 
from you so carefully. Hard lines!” 

“ I am glad I know. It was hateful to be kept in the 
dark — loving my father as I did.” 

“ Dear child, what good can it do you to know?” 

“'Only this good — that lean look forward to the day 
when his murderer will be discovered and punished.” 

“ I’m afraid that day will never come, Daisy. A pur- 
suit that failed seven years ago is not likely to succeed here- 
after. Your mother offered a thousand pounds reward for 
the conviction of the murderer, and some of the sharpest 
brains in London were engaged in the attempt to find him. 
They failed ignominiously; and I take it there is only one 
chance of his being brought to book.” 

“ And that is — ” 

“ His being arrested for some new crime. The cool 
deliberation with which the deed was done— the quiet way 
in which the man got off and disposed of his plunder— 
argues the professional murderer. He may commit more 
murders in the course of his professional career, and sooner 


112 


WHOSE WAS THE HAHD ? 


or later his work may be clumsily done, or his luck may 
change — and then, perhaps, when the rope is round his 
neck, he may confess himself the murderer of your father/^ 

“ Tell me all you know about the man — and the crime/^ 

“My dearest child, I know very little,^’ he said. 
“ Seven years ago 1 was at Winchester, a careless young 
scoundrel, thinking more of cricket and football, and of 
my chances of a scholarship than of my friends; although 
1 think you must know that I loved your mother and your 
father next in this world to my own father, and the dear 
old granddad in Radnorshire. Seven years ago my father 
was a poor man, and I was ever so much more ambitious, 
and ever so much more willing to work than I have ever 
betJii since he came into' his fortune. Ihii afraid I was a 
selfish young beggar in those days, but 1 felt the shock of 
your father’s death very deeply, in spite of my egotism. I 
was mentally stunned by the blow when I took up a Lon- 
don paper and saw that my father’s friend had been mur- 
dered, and thought of the desolation in that happy home, 
the misery of that once happy wife. River Lawn was my 
ideal home, Daisy. I had never been able to picture to 
myself a fairer domestic life than that of your father and 
mother, with my sweet brown-eyed Daisy flitting about 
in the foreground, like a ray of sunshine incarnate. If 
you had changed into anything it would have been a sun- 
ray. I felt the full force of the catastrophe, Daisy, and I 
devoured the account of the inquest, but the details have 
grown dim in my memory. I only know that your father 
was lured i)ito a shabby lodging, upon some shallow pre- 
tense, and there murdered and robbed of nearly four thou- 
sand pounds.” 

And then he argued with me as my step-father had argued. 
He tried to make me think that the history of my father’s 
death was a history which I ought to forget. He used 
almost the same words that Uncle Ambrose had used that 
night at Lucerne when my heart was bursting with grief 
and indignation. Nothing that either could say had any 
power to alter my feelings. 

Cyril and I walked for a long time in those narrow 
streets of tall stone houses, with great sculptured door-ways, 
and here and there the glimpse of a garden seen dimly 
through a vaulted arch. I shall never think of the city of 
Milan as long as I live without thinking of my father’s 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


113 


ghastly death, or without recalling the dreary sense of 
helplessness that came upon me last night as 1 walked by 
OynTs side and heard his sophistical arguments in favor of 
oblivion. 

To-morrow we go to Verona — city of many memories — 
and after a day or two devoted to mediaeval architecture 
we go on to Venice, the dream-city. 

Uncle Ambrose had given me half a dozen books about 
the City of the Doges to read at my leisure, and he is 
always ready with his own storehouse of information which 
seems to me to hold more than all the books that were 
ever written. He has a memory equal to Lord Macaulay’s, 
1 verily believe. 


CHAPTER X 
daisy’s diary IH VENICE. 

Charles Dickens’s unfailing artistic instinct was never 
truer than when he described tWs city as a dream. It is a 
dream — a dream in marble and precious stones and gold — 
a dream lying on the bosom of the blue, bright sea— a 
dream of shadowy streets, where every glimpse of garden 
seen above a decaying wall which once was splendid, has a 
look of fairy-land. Oh, those little bits of greenery, an 
orange-tree, an aloe or two, how they tell where all the 
chief beauty of the place is in marble. Uncle Ambrose 
laughed at me once because 1 screamed with delight at the 
vision of a boughy orange-tree nodding over an angle of 
wall in one of those narrow canals, where the sun hardly 
enters. The. green leaves and waving branches seemed 
strangely beautiful amidst that wonder- world of stone. 

We stayed for a week at Danieli’s and now we are in an 
apartment of our own, on the first floor of a palace which 
is next door but one to Desdemona’s house — the house in 
which she was born and reared, I am told, and from which 
she fled with her tawny warrior. She was about my age, 1 
suppose, but much simpler and more confiding than I am. 
I don’t think I should ever fall in love with a famous sol- 
dier for telling long stories about his fights and his travels, 
unless he were of a fairly presentable complexion. Poor 
little Desdemona. I gaze up at her windows every day 
from my gondola, and wonder which was her nursery win- 


114 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND Y 


dow, and which her school-room, and whether her mother 
was a more agreeable person than her father. 

I wonder, by the way, what kind of father Shakespeare 
had. Judging by old Capulet, Brabantio, and one or two 
other specimens, 1 should conclude that the wool- stapler, 
glover, or butcher of Stratford-on-Avon was not the most 
indulgent or amiable of parents. The Shakespearean idea 
of paternal government is not alluring. 

We have been nearly two months in Venice, and have 
seen the city under many and widely different aspects. We 
have had days and weeks of almost summer brightness, we 
have had intervals of wind and rain and wintery gloom. 
We have visited every nook and corner of the city, have 
seen every picture and every shrine, have read and reread, 
and in some instances understood, our Kuskin. We have 
explored the neighboring islands, we have dawdled away 
sunny days on the Lido; we know the Armenian Convent 
by heart, and Cyril has reproached me with having estab- 
lished what he calls a system of fiirtage with the dearest 
old monk in the world. 

How full this region is of memories of Byron, and how 
prodigious an influence a poet can exercise over the minds 
of men when he has been lying half a century in his grave. 
We think and talk of Byron at every turn. In the Hoge’s 
Palace, on the Bridge of Sighs, on the Lido, where he used 
to take his morning ride; on the staircase where Marino 
Faliero’s noble head rolled down the blood-stained marble 
to testify for all time to the ingratitude of nations; in the 
convent where he spent such happy, innocent hours learn- 
ing the Armenian language — everywhere one finds the 
traces of his footsteps or the shadows which his genius 
clothed with beauty. 

Mother is growing tired of Venice — no, that is impossi- 
ble. Nobody could ever weary of a place so full of loveli- 
ness — a place whose every phase is poetry incarnate in 
marble. She is not tired of Venice; but she begins to 
weary for home — the familiar house and gardens she loves 
so well, where every room and every paUiway and flower- 
bed are interwoven with the history of her happy married 
life— the days before calamity came upon us. I think I 
can understand her feelings almost as well as if we were 
indeed what we have sometimes been taken to be — I think 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 115 

I can read my mother^s heart as well as if she were my 
sister. 

I believe she is happy with Uncle Ambrose, I believe 
that his society is as delightful to her as it is to me, that 
his chivalrous devotion gratifies her as it would any woman 
upon earth; I believe that she is grateful to him and fond 
of him, and that she has never repented, and is never likely 
to repent, her second marriage. But all the same do I 
know that her heart goes back to the old love. I found her 
a few days ago sitting with my father’s photograph on the 
table before her. She was sitting looking at it, with 
clasped hands, and tears streaming down her cheeks. She 
was so absorbed in sad tht.ughts that she did not hear me 
enter the room or leave it. 

She was talking of River Lawn in the evening, and 1 
fancied that her mind had been dwelling on the old happy 
days, and that even in the midst of this beautiful city she 
felt sad and lonely. She has seemed all at once to grow 
languid and listless, and to feel no more interest in scenes 
and buildings whose interest seems inexhaustible to me. 1 
only hope she is not ill. I have questioned her, but she 
assures me there is nothing the matter. She never was in 
better health, but she is haunted by visions of the old home 
where so much of her life has been spent. 

“ 1 dreamed of your father’s grave last night, Daisy,” 
she said; “ I dream of it so often, so often!” 

I could not tell her that I too had had my dreams, not 
of the grave, but of my father himself — horrible dreams 
sometimes, filled with vague shapes and unknown faces. 
I had seen my father struggling with his murderer; 1 had 
seen the cruel blow struck; but I had never been able to 
remember the murderer’s face when 1 awoke, though it 
seemed sometimes in my dream to be a face well-known 
to me. 

I can see that Uncle Ambrose is perplexed and uneasy 
about my mother, and he too seems to have become in- 
different to Titian and Paul Veronese. 

This being so, I am thrown upon Cyril for society in my 
rambles and explorations, and he and I go roaming about 
these delicious waters in cur gondola— our own gondola, 
built on purpose for us, and to be sent to England after 
our return. TIow surprised Beatrice Reardon and all the 
rest of them will be to see us in this mysterious-looking 


116 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


boat, with its swan-like prow and black curtains — a boat 
which seems to have been designed only for mystery and 
romance. 

My good old Berkshire nurse and maid, Martha Broom- 
field, goes everywhere with me, as a kind of duenna, and 
exists in a perpetual state of wonder. I doubt if she is 
altogether awakened to the loveliness of Venice; and in- 
deed she told me the other day that she could not think 
much of a city which had not one good street in it. Milan 
she admitted was a fine town, but Verona she considered 
“ a hole,'^ and she considers Venice decidedly inferior to 
Henley. 

“ I like the Rialto Bridge, Miss Daisy,'^ she said, “ be- 
cause there^s a bit of life there, with the shops and the peo- 
ple, and 1 like the shops in St. Marks’s Square, though 1 
should like them better if the shop-keepers didn’t stand at 
their doors and tout for customers, which is an annoyance 
when one wants to look at things in peace and hasn’t no 
thought of buying anything. But even that isn’t up to the 
Pallerroyal in Paris.” 

It will be seen, therefore, that Broomfield’s tastes are 
entirely modern. Poor soul, she is so patient and so good- 
tempered in going about with me to churches and odd out- 
of-the-way corners that haven’t the faintest interest for her. 
She stands smiling blandly at the pictures and statues while 
OyriJ and I are deep in our guide books or our Ruskin, 
peering into every detail. 

Cyril is capital. He has an ardent love of art, and, in- 
deed, he seems to like everything that I like. 

We have long confidential talks about ourselves and 
other people, about the past and the future — how strange 
ihat one so rarely talks of the present — as we sit in our 
gondola, lazily gliding over the sunlit water, scarcely con- 
scious of the movement of the boat. Sometimes we talk 
P’rench, sometimes Italian, in which I am anxious to attain 
facility. It is one thing to be able to read Dante, 1 find, 
and another thing to express one’s own thoughts easily. 
The language we talk makes very little difference to Broom- 
field, who sits poring over her “Daily Telegraph,” or 
knitting one of those everlasting woolen comforters, which 
she provides for her numerous nephews and nieces. Cyril 
and 1 are as much by ourselves as if Broomfield were one 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


117 


of those sculptured seraphim which the Israelites used to 
have in their houses to represent the deity they worsliiped. 

Cyril’s Oxford days are over. He has taken his degree, 
and has, I believe, done very well — though he has not swept 
the board, he tells me, like Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Gold win 
Smith, as he intended to do when he was at Winchester. 
And now he has to think of what he shall do with his life. 

“ I think I shall go to the Bar,^^ he said, “ because a 
man ought to have a profession of some kind, and 1 rather 
like the idea of the Bar — followed in due course by the 
Bench. And the Bar has advantages for a man who does 
not want to be a slave in the golden years of youth. The 
Bar is a profession in which a man can take it easy.^"’ 

I am afraid Cyril has a slight inclination to idleness — or 
rather, perhaps, that he has a distaste for any systematic 
and monotonous work. He is far too active and energetic 
to waste his days in laziness, but he likes to occupy himself 
according to the caprice of the hour; and then no doubt he 
is influenced by the knowledge that his father is a rich man 
and he an only child. 

We were talking the other day about Uncle Ambrose’s 
fortune, and his almost eccentric indifference to wealth, 
which would have been such a delightful surprise to most 
men in his position. 

“ 1 found out a most extraordinary fact connected with 
my father’s inheritance,” said Cyril; “a fact which re- 
veals an indifference that is really abnormal. An Ameri- 
can 1 met at Oxford got into conversation with me about 
my connection with America, through my father’s kins- 
man. He told me that old Matthew Arden, of Chicago, 
died early in April, ’72, and that as his property was all 
of a most simple and obvious character my father must 
have passed into possession of it within a month or two 
after his death. Now, I distinctly remember that the first 
I heard of the change in our circumstances was on All 
Saints’ -Day, when I went home from Winchester for a 
twenty-four hours’ holiday. My father told me then that 
a great-uncle, with whom he had kept up an occasional 
correspondence, had lately died in America, an old bach- 
elor, and a man of considerable wealth, accumulated in 
trade, and that he had appointed my father residuary 
legatee. 1 was a great deal more excited by the chang(j 
from poverty to wealth than he was. 1 never saw a man 


118 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


SO unmoved by the idea of large means, or so indifr^t^nt 
to the things that money can buy. And that indifference 
has never been lessened; but I believe now that he has a 
wife and daughter to think about he will take more pleas- 
ure out of his wealth and spend his money royally. I hear 
of a house in Grosvenor Square, which my father bought 
the other day, and which is being renovated in the Adam- 
esque style we are all so fond of.^' 

“ A house in town would be rather nice,'^ 1 said, “ but 
I hope Uncle Ambrose does not ifiean to take us too much 
away from Lamford. That is the home I love."” 

“ In spite of its sorrowful associations?"^ 

“ Yes. I donT want to forget my father. I think to 
try and forget the loss of one we love is only a selfish way 
of pleasing ourselves at the cost of our dead. We owe a 
duty to our beloved dead — the duty of long remembrance.’" 

I had heard a good deal about the house in Grosvenor 
Square, and had seen sketches of the rooms and their dec- 
oration. There were to be occasional departures from the 
Adamesque character, notably in the hall and staircase, 
and the room on the half flight. These were to be Moor- 
ish, with a good deal of lattice work screen and Oriental 
drapery. I heard my mother discussing the coloring and 
arrangement with Uncle Ambrose, and 1 was often called 
into council; but 1 was just now too completely steeped in 
the loveliness of Venice to take a very warm interest in any 
London house. What I sighed for was one of those fifteenth- 
century palaces which 1 saw given over to business pur- 
poses, manufactories for carved furniture or Venetian 
glass, store-houses, show-rooms, workshops — palaces in 
which painters like Titian had lived and worked, palaces 
where the walls still showed the armorial bearings of his- 
toric families. Oh, to think that the roof which had shel- 
tered a Doge should ever be vulgarized by trade. 

Cyril laughs at my horror of trade, and reminds me that 
Venice, in the days of her greatest splendor, was a city of 
traders, and that now she is dependent on reviving com- 
merce for her resurrection from poverty and decay. 

Yesterday Cyril and 1 had a grand excursion all to our- 
selves, or with only my duenna Broomfield to make a third: 
good old Broomfield, who always look^ the other way when 
we are talking confidentially. I dare say she wonders what 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


119 


i 

we cau find to talk about — first in one language and then 
in another. Cyriks Italian is of the poorest quality, by the 
way, and very limited in quantity, but he pretends that he 
likes to hear me talk, and he pretends to understand me. 
Our chief confidences, however, are in French, a language 
in which he is quite at home. Indeed, here it is I who am 
at- fault, for to tease me he often persists in talking Paris- 
ian, which is quite a different tongue to the French in 
which Racine and Boileau wrote. 

We started early, on a morning that was more like June 
than February. We had our own gondola, and our two 
men, looking deliciously picturesque in their black livery 
and yellow silk scarfs. They are both dear creatures, 
and have become a part of our family. Paolo is a ba(;he- 
lor, and he is to accompany the gondola to Lamford, and 
live and die in our service; but Giovanni has a wife and 
two babies, so we do not import him. It will be an agoniz- 
ing moment when I have to bid him good-bye. I save my 
dessert every night after dinner, and give it to him next 
morning for his bambmi, and his face becomes one broad 
grin of delight when 1 hand him my little offering. One 
could not venture upon such childishness with a Thames 
waterman, whose only idea of kindness from his superior 
begins and ends with beer. 

We had a most delightful picnic basket, enough for the 
whole party, and we were to go to Torcello, and to be free 
till sunset. Oh, how like a fairy tale it was to go gliding 
over that blue lagoon, passing Murano and its chimneys, 
and Buiano and its lace factory, and gliding on and on by 
willow-shaded banks till we came to all that is left of the 
mother city of Venice. 

We landed in a narrow creek, among sedges and alders, 
and long rank grass, and I could have almost thought I 
was in a backwater at home; but within a few paces of our 
landing-place stood the octagonal church of Santa Fosca, 
and the museum which calls itself a Municipal Palace, and 
just behind them the cathedral, very plain of aspect outside, 
but grand and beautiful within. 

After a very conscientious visitation of the two churches, 
and a rather superficial examination of the maj’ble relics in 
the museum, we went in quest of a picturesque spot for 
our picnic; and having found a bower of alders on the edge 
of the meadows, where the cattle were feeding quietly in 


120 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


the sweet flowery grass, on ground that was once the city 
of Torcello, we lunched as it were tete-a-tete with the Adri- 
atic, for in front of us we could see nothing but the bright 
blue waters and the painted sails of some fishing boats all 
aglow with crimson, and purple, and orange in the noon- 
day light. We lingered long over the delicious meal, in air 
that was far more exhilarating than the champagne which 
Cyril persuaded me to taste, and which he himself drank 
with much gusto. 

I told him that I thought it a horrid thing to see a 
young man drinking champagne, and pretending to be a 
severe judge of the particular vintage. I considered such 
a taste odiously suggestive of some overfed alderman, feast- 
ing in the city. 

“ You will be taking turtle next,^^ I said. 

‘‘Why, you silly puss, we often have turtle at our lunches 
in Tom Quod,^’ said he. “ Do you suppose we wait for 
gray hairs and red noses before we learn to appreciate the 
good things of this life. An undergrad, is as good a judge 
of turtle and champagne as any alderman who ever passed 
through a long apprenticeship of boiled beef and beer to 
the luxuries of Mansion House. 

We sent Broomfield off to find our gondoliers, while we 
two wandered along the edge of that verdant island, with 
our feet almost in the sea. 

“ Now we have lost sight of the churches, we might 
almost fancy ourselves on a desert island,^’ said I. 

“ I only wish the fancy were true,^^ said he. “ 1 should 
revel in a spell of summer idleness on a desert island; if 
we had only enough to eat.^^ 

“ That last condition takes the poetry out of the whole 
tiling,^’ answered 1. 

“ Oh, but you would not have us starving, until we 
began to look at each other and wonder which bit was the 
nicest.-’^ 

“ Or, the least nasty. No, that idea is too awful; it is 
one of the dreadful mysteries of human baseness that we 
can never understand till we are brought face to face with 
death. Oh, it is so dreadful to think that the mere blind 
clinging to life can change men into wild beasts. And yet 
the thing happens. You have filled me with horror by the 
mere suggestion. 

“ Daisy, you have too vivid an imagination. You look 


WHOSE WAS THE HAHD ? 


121 


at me as if you saw the potentiality of cannibalism depicted 
in my countenance. You and 1 will visit no island more 
savage than Prosperous, and there it seems there was always 
enough to eat. 

“ Prospero was an enchanter, sir.^’ 

“ And Miranda was an enchantress — for Ferdinand, at 
least. Over him she hung earth’s most potent spell. Will 
you be my Miranda, Daisy?” 

We were standing on that quiet shore, the waves coming 
curling, azure and emerald and silvery bright, up to our 
very feet. We were as much alone as Ferdinand and 
Miranda can ever have been on their enchanted isle, and — 
he had the supreme impertinence to put his arm round my 
waist. 

I believe that kind of thing has happened to Beatrice 
Reardon almost as often as the toothache; and my cousin 
Flora has told me that it is sometimes done at dances, in a 
conservatory where there are palms and tree-ferns, after 
supper; but such a thing had never occurred to me, and it 
took my breath away. 

“ Be my Miranda, Daisy,” he went on, in such a charm- 
ing voice that 1 forgot to be angry with him, or at any rate 
forgot to express my indignation. “ Let me be your Fer- 
dinand, and all the world will be my enchanted island. It 
is the fairy who makes the spell.” 

“ I don’t quite follow your meaning,” I said, stupefied 
at his audacity. 

“ Oh, Daisy, what a horrid thing you say,” he exclaimed, 
evidently hurt, “ 1 thought you were romantic and full of 
poetry, and you answer me as if you were made of wood.” 

He took away his arm from my waist. 1 believe if he 
had left it there any longer he would have pinched me sav- 
agely. His whole countenance changed. 

“ I can quite understand you, Cyril,” I said very meek- 
ly; “ I thought you and I were to be brother and sister.” 

“ You know you thought nothing of the kind, miss; you 
refused to accept my father as a father, or to call him by 
that name. You told me very distinctly on his wedding- 
day that I was not to have the privileges of a brother, and 
I replied that I had no- desire to stand upon that footing. 
And now that the happiest months of my life have been 
spent with you, now that I am over head and ears in love, 
you pretend not to understand, you make believe to be 


122 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


stupid aud apathetic. It is very cruel — more cruel than 
words can say — if you have been fooling me all this time.^^ 

I don’t know exactly what I said after this. I think 1 
must hare apologized for my stupidity, for he certainly for- 
j^ave me, and put his arm round my waist again, and 
kissed me, not in the boisterous sort of way that he kissed 
me in the carriage after mother’s wedding, but gently, and 
even timidly, so that I could not find it in my heart to be 
angry. 

“ Are these my Miranda’s lips?” he asked, and 1 think 
I said that it might be so if he pleased; and then we went 
slowly, slowly, slowly back to the creek where we had left 
the gondola; and 1 believe we were engaged. 

Broomfield looked at us in a most extraordinary way 
when we took our seats opposite her, as if she really guessed 
what had happened, which was hardly possible. Our dear 
good men had eaten an enormous luncheoji, and they sung 
their delightful songs all the way back to Venice. 

The sun soon began to steep everything in gold — islands, 
water, distant mountains, and the wonderful city toward 
which we were going, and the painted sails of the fishing- 
boats, and the clouds floating in the azure sky — azure that 
changed into opal— gold that changed to crimson, as the 
bell -tower of St. George the Greater rose out of the level 
tide, and the lamps on the Piazza began to gleam like a 
string of diamonds. 

Cyril is a very impetuous person, and before we sat down 
to dinner he had told Uncle Ambrose and mother that he 
and I were engaged, and that he would not forfeit that 
privilege to be the Doge — if the ducal power of Venice were 
to be revived to-morrow. Late in the evening mother 
came into my room and sat with me for nearly an hour by 
the wood fire. She told me that nothing would please her 
better than that Cyril and I should love each other well 
enough to take upon ourselves the most solemn tie this 
earth knows. Her seriousness made me very serious, and 
almost frightened me. 

“ I am pleased that you should be engaged even earlier 
than 1 was, Daisy,” she said, “ and that you should not be 
hardened and spoiled by the experience of the world, where 
girls learn to be selfish, and vain, and self-seeking. 1 am 
pleased th^t vou should be engaged to your first lover, in 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


123 


the very freshness and dawn of your life. It is too early 
to think about marrying just yet awhile; but a year or two 
hence — 

“ Oh, not for ever so many years,^ I cried, interrupting 
her. “ Pray don’t talk about getting rid of me. I want 
to stay with you, mother. You are all in all to me. You 
are not tired of me, are you?” 

“ Tired! No, my darling. It will be a sad day for me 
when my bright bird leaves the home-nest; but I married 
very young, Daisy, and my wedded life was all gladness. 
An engagement should not last too long, even when the 
lovers are as young as you and Cyril. Two years will be 
quite long enough. In two years you will be nearly 
twenty.” 

“ That sounds dreadfully ancient,” said 1; for indeed it 
seems that one has done with youth when one is out of 
one’s teens. Mother gave me her small pearl necklace on 
my thirteenth birthday, and I was so proud of myself, and 
thought myself quite a personage because I was in my 
teens; and now here she was talking coolly about- my soon 
being twenty, and old enough to be turned out-of-doors. 

” Two years be will no time,” I told her. “ I would 
rather be engaged for ten, so that I may stay at Eiver Lawn 
with you. ” 

“Who knows, dearest, if you need ever leave Eiver ^ 
Lawn,” she answered, sweetly. “ I have always thought 
the French much wiser than us in their domestic arrange- 
ments, because they are not afraid to keep their children 
under the family roof when they are married; and thus the 
bond of parentage grows stronger instead of weaker, and 
the little children of the third generation grow up at the.- 
feet of the old people. 1 have heard Englishmen say that 
this plan can never succeed with us; and, if so, one can 
not help thinking there must be some want of affection in 
the English heart. Now, in your case, Daisy, there is every 
reasoji that your married life should be spent in your 
mother’s home, since you are to marry my step-son.” 

“ Dear, dearest mother,” I exclaimed, giving her aliug 
which would have done credit to a young she-bear, “ how 
sweet and how wise you are. I am very glad I accepted 
Cyril. I see now that he is just the very best husband I 
could have chosen.” 

“ My darling, how lightly you talk,” said my mother, al- 


124: 


WHOSE WAS THE HAHD ? 


most reproachfully. “ Your step-father and 1 are naturally 
pleased that you and Cyril should have chosen each other, 
but that is not enough, not nearly enough; nothing is 
enough unless you love him truly and devotedly, with your 
whole heart and mind, as I loved your father. 

“ 1 suppose 1 like him as well as 1 could like anybody,^'’ 
1 answered, rather frightened at her grave looks and 
earnest words. 

' “ Liking is not enough. 

“ Well, perhaps I love him. 1 know I have been very 
happy with him ever since we came here~so happy as to 
forget every idea of sorrow or trouble in the world, 1 
said, checking myself confusedly; for the thing that I had 
forgotten more than I ever thought 1 could forget was the 
dark story of my father^s death. “ I have been quite 
abandoned to happiness, but 1 don’t know how much 
Venice may have had to do with that, and whether 1 shall 
care quite as much for Cyril when we get back to Lam- 
ford.” 

My love, be serious,” urged mother, looking dread- 
fully grave. 

“ Seriously, then, 1 believe I love him as well as I shall 
ever love anybody.” 

“ Daisy, you talk like a coquette, and not like an earnest 
woman.” 

“ Dearest, don’t be shocked with me. It all seemed like 
a dream or a fairy-tale to-day, when Cyril and 1 stood on 
the beach in the sunshine, with the waves making music at 
our feet. If you had heard how lightly he asked me to be 
his wife — (indeed he never once mentioned the word) — you 
would not wonder that I am inclined to speak half in jest 
about this solemn business. Let us take the situation 
lightly, mother, and if after a year or two we should hap- 
pen to grow tired of each other, why, we can apologize, and 
drop back into the position of brother and sister.” 

“ No, Daisy, that will not do — there must be no engage- 
ment — there must be no semblance of a bond between you 
— unless you and he are both sui'e of your hearts. JVo hay 
burlas con el amor. Good-night, dear. Pray to God for 
guidance. Eemember marriage means forever — as a bond 
or as a stigma it marks a woman’s life to the end.” 

I felt miserable after she had left me, but I did what 
she told me to do. I knelt down and prayed to be guided 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


125 


and led in the right way — led to choose the fate that should 
be best for my own happiness and for my mother^s. The 
thought that I need never leave home if Cyril were my 
husband, made him seem to me quite the most perfect hus- 
band I could have. 

Scarcely had I risen from my knees, than 1 heard the 
distant dip of oars, and the music of a guitar and a couple 
of mandolins, accompanying the song Cyril and I are so 
fond of. The sounds came nearer, slowly and softly grow- 
ing out of the still night; the melodious plish-plash of the 
oars, the silvery tinkling of the mandolins, the deeper 
tones of the guitar, and a fine barytone voice which I 
fancied 1 knew. 

“ Will they pass, will theystay?’^ I asked mysi-lf, throw- 
ing open my window and hiding myself behind the heavy 
velvet curtain, where 1 could see without fear of being 
seen. 

The moon was near the full, and all the palaces up on 
the opposite bank were bathed in silvery liglit, and along 
the broad open canal a gondola came gliding onward, and 
trembled in the soft breeze. It came nearer and nearer, 
till it stopped under my window, and then the mandolins 
and guitar played a familiar symphony, and the voice I 
knew very well began Schubert^s “ Cute Nacht.’^ 

He — it was Cyril, of course — sung the serenade beauti- 
fully. Music is one of his greatest talents, inherited from 
his mother; for I doubt if Uncle Ambrose could distinguish 
“ God Save the Queen from “ Eobin Adair. 

He sung that lovely melody to perfection, or it seemed 
perfection, on the moonlit canal, with those fantastic 
Chinese lanterns trembling in the soft, sweet wind. I feel 
assured that it was on just such a night as this that Desde- 
mona eloped with her Moor. 

When he had sung the last notes and the mandolins had 
tinkled into silence, he stood looking up at my window, as 
if he were waiting for some token of approval. 

What Desdemona would have done under the same cir- 
cumstances floated upon me in an instant. I crept to the 
mantel-piece and chose a lily from the vase of flowers, and, 
still hidden by the curtain, flung it out of the window. 

He caught the flower cleverly, aud then, after a pause, 
the oars dipped, and the mandolins began to play the 


126 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


serenade from “ Don Pasquale/^ and the gondola moved 
slowly, slowly down the canal, he singing as it went. 

I wonder if the other inhabitants of Venice considered 
him a nuisance. There was a man at the table d’hote at 
Danieli^s who called Venice “ a smelly place — that was 
all he had to say about the most enchanting city in the 
world. Such a man as that would be sure to object to a 
serenade. 

Cyril and I were solemnly engaged this morning. We 
were plighted and pledged to each other for life, and when 
we marry we are to have our own suite of rooms in Grosve- 
nor Square, the whole of the third floor, which is to be de- 
corated and furnished according to my taste. This means 
that Cyril and I are to choose everything; for, of course, I 
should not be such a selfish wretch as to choose without 
deferring to him. 

At River Lawn we are to have the east wing, and moth- 
er will build more rooms if ever we fancy we want them. 
And the gondola is to be ours, the gondola in which Cyril 
sung last night. 

1 feel as if the gondola were a personal friend. 


CHAPTER XI. 

A WOMAH WHO MIGHT HAVE BEEN HAPPY. 

Gilbert Florestan, who came of age a few months 
before Robert HatrelPs death, was still a bachelor. He 
saw his twenty-eighth birthday approaching, and he saw 
himself no nearer matrimony than when he was twenty- 
one. His life in the interval had been eventful, and he 
felt older than his years. He had entered the diplomatic 
service under the best possible auspices, with family inter- 
est and collegiate honors in his favor. He had traveled 
much, and had spent the brightest years of his youth in 
vagrant diplomacy, passing from one legation to another. 
He had loved, and he had suffered; and now, at twenty- 
eight, having, as he believed, got beyond the passions and 
illusions of youth, he was established in Paris as an idler 
by profession, well looked upon in the best society of the 
dazzling capital, and not unacquainted with the worst. 

He was not rich, as wealth is counted nowadays, when 
hardly any man under a millionaire presumes to consider 
himself comfortably off. He bad bread aiid cheese; that 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


127 


is to say, landed property which brought him, nominal 1}% 
two thousand five hundred a year, actually, about seven- 
teen hundred. He was not ambitious. He had lost father 
and mother before he was fifteen years of age, and he had 
none but distant relations. The stimulus to effort which 
paternal pride and maternal love might have afiorded was 
in his case wanting. He had no sister to interest herself 
in his endeavors and to exult in his triumphs. He had no 
brother to rouse the spirit of emulation in his sluggish tem- 
perament. He told himself that he stood alone in the 
world, and that it mattered very little what became of him 
— that he might go his own way, whether to blessedness or 
to ruin, without hurting anybody but himself. 

This sense of isolation had tended toward cynicism. He 
saw the world in which he lived in its worst aspect, and 
cultivated a low opinion of his fellow-men — and women, 
since one never-to-be-forgotten April night in Florence, 
when, standing in a moonlit garden, he heard a womaiFs 
careless speech from an open window just above his head — 
speech which told him with bitter unreserve that the wom- 
an he had worshiped as more than half a saint was an auda- 
cious and remorseless sinner. 

Never till that night had Gilbert Florestan deliberately 
listened to a conversation that was not meant for his ear, 
and on that night he stood beneath the window-sill for less 
than five minutes. He only waited long enough to be sure 
that he had not deceived himself — that the horrid words 
he had heard were not a delusion engendered of his own 
fevered brain. There, hidden amid the foliage of magnolia 
and orange, ho stood and listened to the two who leaned 
upon the cushioned sill above him, looking dreamily out 
into the night. No, there was no illusion. Those words 
were real — silvery sweet, though to him they sounded like 
the hissing of Medusa's snakes. They told him that the 
woman he was pursuing with adoring and all-confiding love 
was the mistress of another man — that if she were to yield 
to his prayers and marry him — a question which she was 
now debating with her lover — the marriage would be a 
simple matter of convenience, and the lover would not be 
the less beloved or the less favored. 

“ For thee, carissimo, it would be always the same," said 
the silver voice; and the music of the waltz in the adjoin- 


128 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


ing ball-room seemed to take up the strain. “ Always the 
same — always the same. 

Florestaii waited to hear no more. He left the garden 
of that semiTroyal villa, walked straight home to his lodg- 
ings in the Via Cavour, packed up the lady's letters — those 
cherished letters, every one of which — from the tiniest note 
acknowledging a bouquet, to the longest and most roman- 
tic disquisition upon the old theme of he loves me, loves 
me not — he had treasured in a locked drawer, together 
with every flower he had begged from the clusters she wore 
on her breast, every old glove he had gathered, and the 
satin slipper for which he had paid more than its weight in 
gold to her maid. He did not write her a letter. He 
would not stoop so low as to give any expression to his 
anger or his scorn. He had been deceived, that was all. 
The woman he loved had only existed in his imagination. 
The beauty which had won him belonged to quite a differ- 
ent kind of woman. Perhaps there was no such woman — 
out of a book — as the woman he had imagined, the only 
woman he cared to win. 

“ I know you; good-bye." 

Those flve words were all the explanation or farewell 
which he deigned to send her. He wrote them in his bold, 
strong hand upon a sheet of Bath post, and wrapped it 
round the packet of letters. Then he packed them in an- 
other sheet, and sealed them with the seal which had been 
set upon so many an ardent outpouring of his passionate 
heart. 

Yes, he had loved her, with all the fire and freshness of 
three-and-twenty — with all the romantic fervor of a mind 
fed upon classic Greek, and steeped in Italian poetry. He 
had come to Florence a romantic youth, he left Florence a 
Uase man of the world; and yet now, five years after, in 
this bustling cosmopolitan and distinctly modern Paris, 
the very thought of those old palaces in which he had 
danced with her, those old gardens where they had sat in 
the moonlight, thrilled him with the bitter-sweet memory 
of a dream and a delusion that had been dearer than words 
can tell. 

He had not been at Fountainhead, his birthplace by the 
river, except for a week or a fortnight at a time since he 


WHOSE W^AS THE HAND ? 


129 


came of age, and sold the meadows adjoining River Lawn 
to Robert Hatrell. But although he had been living abroad 
since he left the University, he had never consented to let 
strangers inhabit the house in which his father and mother 
had lived and died, albeit agents had been desirous to find 
him an “ eligible tenant/^ The house remained shut up, 
in the care of his mother^s faithful housekeeper, and her 
nephew, a handy young man who helped in the gardens, 
where expenses had been cut down to the lowest level com- 
patible with the preservation of the beauty of grounds 
which had- been the chief delight of young Mrs. Florestan’s 
life. A woman takes to a garden naturally, as a duckling 
takes to water, and cherishes it, and watches it, and thinks 
about it as if it were a living thing. The worship of flowers 
and shrubs is inherent in the female mind, and a woman 
who did not care for her garden would be a monster. 

The house was old, as old as the Tudors, and it was just 
one of those places which the modern millponaire would 
have ruthlessly razed to the ground, or so altered, restored, 
enlarged, and beautified, as to obliterate its every charm of 
age and picturesqueness. Florestan was content to leave 
it alone in all its subdued coloring, quaintness, and incon- 
veniences of construction, telling of a civilization long past, 
and of a life less pretentious and more domestic. The gar- 
dens had all the grave beauty of an honorable old age. 
Very little money had been spent upon them; but there 
had been taste and care from the beginning of things, 
when they who planned them had Lord Bacon^s “ Essay on 
Gardens in their minds as a new thing, and had known 
Francis Bacon in the flesh, and talked with him of the 
trees and flowers he loved. 

Vagrant diplomacy had carried Gilbert Florestan very 
far from the old home in which his ancestors had dwelt 
from generation to generation; but he kept the image of 
his birthplace in a corner of his heart, and he would almost 
as soon have sold his heart’s best blood as the house in 
which his people had lived and died. 

Paris suited his cynical temper at eight-and-twenty; a 
city through which the whole civilized world passed and 
repassed; the vestibule of Europe, the playground of 
America; a city in which a man who only wanted to look 
on at the life-drama could have ample opportunity to study 


130 WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 

the varieties of mankind, nationalities, professions, wealth, 
and penary. 

Mr. Florestan had a fourth floor in the Champs Elysees, 
an apartment which he spoke of jocosely as his bower. 
Nominally the fourth, it was practically the fifth floor, and 
the balcony commanded a bird^s-oye view of the city, a 
vast panorama of white walls and gray and red roofs, 
through which wound the serpentine folds of the dark-blue 
river. 

Although the rooms were so near the roof they were 
spacious and lofty, and were furnished with some taste, 
Elorestan^s own belongings, books, pictures, photographs, 
bronzes, and curios, giving an air of comfort and individu- 
ality to the conventional Louis Seize suite of tapestried 
easy-chairs and sofas, ebony tables and cabinets. The 
rooms comprised an anteroom, where three large palms 
and a Turkish divan suggested Oriental luxury, and which 
served as a waiting-room for tradesmen and troublesome 
visitors of all kinds, a library, where he dined on the very 
rare occasions when he dined at home, a small smoking- 
room adjoining, and a spacious bedroom, with dressing- and 
bath-room attached. 

Here Gilbert Florestan lived his own life, received the 
few intimate friends he cared about, and shut out all the 
great category of bores. In the polite world of Paris he 
was known as a well-born Englishman whose commanding 
presence and handsome face were distinctly ornan7ental in 
any salon, and he was welcomed accordingly with Parisian 
effusion, which he knew meant very little. In the demi- 
monde he was known as a young man who had outlived his 
illusions, and in that half world he was a more important 
figure than in the salons of the great. It must be owned 
that he had a preference for bohemian society, with all its 
accidents and varieties, its brilliant reputations of to-day, 
its sudden disappearances of to-morrow, its frank revela- 
tions, its absence of all reserve. 

He painted cleverly, in a sketchy style, after the manner 
of the impressionists, and he was very fond of art. Music 
and the drama had also an inexhaustible charm for him, 
and he loved those out-of-the-way nooks and corners of 
the art world where dwell the men and women whose 
talents have won but scanty appreciation from the great 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 131 

public, and who have never been spoiled or Philistanized 
by large monetary rewards. 

“ Directly an artist gets rich, there is a divine fire goes 
out of him,^'’ said Florestan. “All the spontaneity and 
the daring which made him great is paralyzed by the greed 
of gain. He no longer obeys the first impulses of his 
genius, the real inspiration, but he sits down to consider 
what will pay best; the thing, good or bad, true or false, 
which will bring him in the most solid cash. He strives 
no longer to realize his ideal; he studies the market, and 
paints, or writes, or composes for that. And so dies the 
divinity out of his art. His genius shudders, and flies the 
trader’s studio; for once bitten with the desire to make 
money, the artist sinks to the level of the trader. He is 
no better than the middleman with his shop on the boule- 
vard and his talent for rklame. ” 

There is plenty of unrewarded talent in the great city of 
Paris; and among painters and composers who had never 
reached the monotonous table-land of prosperity, among 
journalists, poets, and vaudevillists, G-ilbert Florestan 
found a^little world which was bohemian without being 
vicious, but which occasionally opened its doors to certain 
stars of the demi~m.O)ule who would hardly have been re- 
ceived in the great houses of the Faubourg St. Germain or 
the Faubourg St. Honore. 

It was at a musical evening on a third floor in the Rue 
des Saints Peres that Florestan met two women, in whom 
he felt keenly interested at first sight. They were mother 
and daughter. The mother was distinguished-looking, and 
had once been handsome; the daughter was eminently 
beautiful. They were Spaniards, natives of Granada. The 
elder lady described herself as the widow of a general 
officer, Felix Quijada, who died when her only child, 
Dolores, was an infant. She had migrated to Paris soon 
after her husband’s death, and had lived there ever since. 
Mother and daughter were both dressed in black, with an 
elegant simplicity which did not forbid the use of a great 
deal of valuable lace; and Florestan noted that the elder 
lady wore diamond solitaire ear-rings, and the younger a 
collet necklace, which would not have misbeseemed the 
throat of a duchess. 

Nowhere, however, could diamonds have shown to 
greater advantage than on the ivory whiteness of Mile. 


132 


WHOSE WAS THE HAKD ? 


Dolores di Quijada’s swan-like neck. Nowhere had Flor- 
estan seen a lovelier complexion or finer eyes; but that 
which attracted him most in the Spanish girl’s face was her 
resemblance to the woman he had loved, the woman who 
had deceived him, and well-nigh broken his heart. He 
was interested in her at first sight, and he begged to be in- 
troduced to her and her mother. 

They received him with cordiality, perhaps because he 
was the handsomest and most aristocratic-lookiug mail in 
ah assembly where art was strongly represented by long 
hair and well-worn dress-coats on the part of the men, and 
by eccentric toilets and picturesque heads on the part of 
^ the women. Mnie. Duturque, the giver of the parly, was 
the wife of a musical man who had written a successful 
opera twenty years before, succeeded by several unsuccess- 
ful ones, and who now made a somewhat scanty living by 
giving piano-forte lessons and publishing occasional com- 
positions, which he fondly believed to be as good as Chopin’s 
best work, but which were rarely played by anybody except 
his own pupils. 

Clever people, musical or otherwise, liked good-natured 
little Mme. Duturque ’s parties, and as she did not inquire 
too closely into the antecedents of any well-mannered and 
prett}" woman who sought her acquaintance, people were 
met in her salon who were not without histories, and whose 
whole existence was in somewise mysterious and only to 
be guessed at. 

The Spanish beauty and her mother were accidental 
acquaintances, met at Boulogne-sur-Mer the previous sum- 
mer. 

“ Are they not charming?” the little woman asked 
Florestan, while her husband, a grim -looking man, with a 
long, gaunt figure, after the manner of Don Quixote, a 
long pale face and long gray hair, was crashing out one of 
his noisiest mazurkas, in which the temiio rubato prevailed 
to an agonizing extent. 

“ They are of a very old Castilian family. A Quijada 
was secretary or something to Charles thq Fifth,- and I 
know they are rich, though they live in a very simple style 
on a second fioor in the Eue Saint Guillaume.” 

“ The young lady’s diamonds look like wealth, most as- 
suredly,” replied Florestan; “ but how comes it that so 
lovely a woman, and not without a dot, should be unmar- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 133 

ried at five- or six-and-twenty. She looks quite as old as 
that. 

“ Oh, she has had offers and offers. She is tired of ad- 
miration and pursuit. Her mother has talked to me of the 
grand opportunities she has thrown away. She is capri- 
cious — a spoiled child. She does what she likes, and her 
mother is too fond of her to oppose her in anything. They 
adore each other. It is a most touching spectacle to see 
them in their modest interior.'’^ 

The mother looks as if she could hate as well as love,^’ 
said Florestan; “ there are some resolute lines about those 
lips and that prominent chin. 

“ Quite the patrician air, has she not, and remarkably 
well preserved too?’^ said madame, who was proud of her 
guests and their diamonds. It was not often such diamonds 
had appeared on the third floor over a boot-maker ^s shop 
in the Rue des Saints Peres. 

When the mazurka had finished in a tempest of double 
arpeggios and a volley of minor chords, Florestan contrived 
to get a little conversation with Mile. Quijada. 

Her manners were certainly distinguished. She had a 
reposeful air which contrasted agreeably with that Parisian 
vivacity which Florestan knew by heart. Her voice was 
deep-toned and full, and seemed just the one voice to har- 
monize with the dark and luminous eyes, the somewhat 
heavy features and marble complexion. She did not strike 
him as a brilliant or intellectual woman. She suggested a 
statue warmed into life, but only a dreamy and languorous 
life, which might at any hour fade again into marble. He 
had a shrewd suspicion that she was unhappy; that the dia- 
monds and the adoring mother did not altogether suffice 
for happiness. There was a pained look sometimes about 
the lovely, sensuous lips, there was a droop in the sculpt- 
ured eyelids which suggested weariness, weariness of life 
and of the world perhaps, or it might be that self-contempt 
which springs from the consciousness of a false position. 

He was struck with her and interested in her, but she 
awakened no tender emotion in his breast, no thrill of pas- 
sion in his veins. He could never love any woman who 
was like that woman. If ever Love came to him again it 
must wear a different shape, must be as unlUce his false 
love as one woman can be unlike another. 

“ I can not give parties like these pleasant gatherings of 


134 


WHOSE WAS THE HAKD ? 


Madame Duturque’s/' said Mme. Quijada, by and by, 
when she was bidding him good-night, after he had minis- 
tered to her comforts by supplying her with a cup of very 
weak tea and a sugared biscuit, “ my daughter and I live in 
a very secluded way. But we are always at home to a few 
intimate friends on a Thursday evening, and if you should 
ever care to drop in upon our seclusion we shall be charmed 
to see you.^^ 

“ Be sure, madame, that 1 shall not be slow to avail my- 
self of that distinguished privilege,^' replied Florestan, 
and his reply meant more than such an answer usually 
means. 

His curiosity, his interest in the side scenes of life, were 
aroused by these two women, in whose existence he scented 
one of those small social mysteries which he delighted to 
unravel. So beautiful and so elegant a wmnan as Senorita 
Quijada would hardly waste her beauty and her jewels 
upon such a shabby salon as Mme. Duturque^s if she were 
free of more fashionable assemblies. She was evidently 
outside the pale, and with that hankering after respecta- 
bility which is the canker-worm of the disreputable, she 
had greedily accepted the unquestioning kindness of the 
music- master^s wife. 

“ What do you thinK of those two?'’^ asked a young por- 
trait-painter with whom Florestan was intimate, as the 
jgpanish ladies left the salon. 

. “ I take them to be women with a history. 

“ Yes, and a dark one. Madame Duturque is an angel 
of benevolence and simplicity, and all her wandering lights 
are of purest luster. She has entertained a good many 
demons unawares, and I fancy in Madame Quijada she 
has got hold of a very diabolical specimen.^’ 

“ The lady is handsome, and her manners are both dig- 
nified and refined. 

“ So are the manners of a Harpy, no doubt, when you 
meet one in evening dress. I dare say Olyternnestra was a 
very elegant woman, and Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth is 
one of the politest persons in the world of poetry. I think 
I would as soon trust my life in a lonely Scotch castle with 
Lady Macbeth as on a third floor in Paris with Madame 
Quijada, supposing that Madame Q. had any motive for 
poisioning me.” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


135 


“ You take a strong view/’ said Florestaii, smiling at 
his intensity. 

“ I always take strong views. It is my trade to study 
the human countenance, and I have made a particular 
study of those two faces, mother and daughter. The 
daughter is a victim — the mother is a devil of cunning and 
iitiscrLipulous greed! Did you see the diamonds they wore? 
Those are the price of a woman’s soul. The daughter has 
been sold to the highest bidder, and the mother has been 
the huxter. That woman would do anything for gain.” 

” I am sorry for Mademoiselle Quijada, if there is any 
truth in your supposition.” 

“So am 1 — sorry almost to tears. She is a stupid, 
beautiful creature — with very little more intellect than a 
butterfly: but one is always sorry for a crushed butterfly: 
sorry for beauty trodden underfoot. She is a woman who 
rnii^ht have been happy. Yes, I am sorry for her.” 

Florestan lost no time in availing himself of Mine. 
Quijada’s in\itation. He went to the Hue Saint Guillaume 
on the following Thursday evening, between eight and nine, 
very curious to see what kind of home the Spaniard and 
her daughter had made for themselves in the wilderness of 
Paris. 

The house in which they lived was one of the oldest and 
possibly one of the largest in the old-fashioned street. It 
was assuredly one of (he most gloomy, a Louse with a stone 
court-yard, screened from the street by a high wall. To 
enter the court after dark was like going into a deep abyss 
of gloom, through which a lighted window here and there 
shone faintly, muffled by curtains. For the most part the 
windows were closed by Venetian shutters, through which 
no ray of lamp-light escaped. The porter who answered 
his summons informed him that Mme. Quijada’s door was 
on the left side of the second-floor landing, but vouchsafed 
no further attention, and he groped his way upward be- 
tween the dim lamp-light in the vestibule and the still 
fainter light of a lamp on the first floor. The second floor 
had only the borrowed light from below, and he was but 
just able to distinguish the handle of the door-bell. 

He was surprised at the door being opened by an elderly 
man in livery— a very sober livery — who had the air of an 
old retainer, and who conducted him through a lobby and 
an anteroom to a spacious salon, where he found the two 

y 


136 


WHOSE 'WAS ini': hai^d ? 


ladies seated, with a third who sat in a corner somewhat 
overshadowed by the projecting chimney-piece, a woman 
of any age between thirty and forty, whose pale face and 
premature gray hair attracted Florestan^s attention. Sel- 
dom, if ever, had he seen a countenance which bore in its 
every line so striking an evidence of past sorrow. 

“ That woman with the iron-gray hair must have suffered 
as very few women are called upon to suffer, '’Mie told him- 
self. 

The beautiful Dolores was seated on a sofa on the op- 
posite side of the hearth, fanning herself with a languid 
grace which brought into play the beauty of her hand and 
the brilliancy of her diamond rings, and listening, or [)re- 
tending to listen, to the animated talk of a man whom 
Florestan recognized as the celebrated journalist and novel- 
ist, Frangois de Lornerac. 

A petit creve of two- or three-and-twenty, who sat on a 
pouf near the sofa, lost in admiration of the lady’s beauty 
and the journalist’s wit, completed the party. 

Mme. Quijada received him with much cordiality, Dolores 
gave him the tips of her fingers, and Lornerac accorded 
him a condescending nod. A man whose last novel had 
taken Paris by storm could not be expected to put himself 
out of the way on account of a casual Englishman. 

Florestan took a chair near the lady in the shadowy 
corner, and then having talked for a few minutes with his 
hostess, gave himself* up to the contemplation of the room. 
In his mind surroundings were always indicative of char- 
acter, and he was anxious to see what the nest would say of 
the birds. 

The salon was furnished with exquisite simplicity, and 
in a subdued style of decoration and coloring that testified 
to the refinement of the person who had planned and 
arranged it. The Louis Seize arm-chairs and sofas were 
covered with old tapestry, in greenish and grayish tones, 
softened by age. They looked like furniture that had been 
ll^’ought from some old family home in the counti^. There 
were three or four small tables, a secretaire in old walnut 
wood, an Indian screen, and several vases filled with choice 
flowers. Of those bibelots and chinoiseries that ornament 
the average drawing-room, there was no trace. Those 
choice flowers which at this season must have cost a good 
deal of money were the only embellishment of the plain 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


13 ? 


and somber furniture. Chief among them was a cluster- 
ing mass of white lilac in a large vase of richly glazed delf 
that looked like lapis-lazuli. 

The spacious and lofty room with its somber colorings 
and air of a departed century, would have been very 
gloomy without these flowers. They afforded the only 
touch of brightness and gayety in the picture. 

“ An affectation of simplicity with considerable expendi- 
ture in superfluities, such as hot-house flowers and dia- 
monds,’’ mused P’lorestan. “ I wonder what it all means? 
and I wonder what she means?” he added, looking at the 
pale still woman with the large soft eyes and the iron-gray 
hair. 

It might be that Mme. Quijada saw his look, for she ap- 
proached at this moment and introduced him to the silent 
lady, whom she described as her niece, Mile. Marcet. 
“ Louise is more than my niece, she is my adopted daugh- 
ter,” she said; “ her father and I were brought up together 
on a small estate in the neighborhood of Marseilles, and my 
niece here was born within sight of the Mediterranean.” 

“ Do you see any likeness between my daughter and her 
cousin, monsieur?” 

“ Yes, there is a likeness,” answered Florestan, “ I can 
trace it in the form of the brow and in the expression of 
the eyes.” 

He waited, looking at Mile. Marcet with a friendly smile, 
expecting her to speak, and then keenly anxious to hear 
her voice, he asked her an unmeaning question. 

” Are you fond of Paris, mademoiselle, or do you still 
regret the olive woods and pine-clad hills of Provence?” 

” 1 have never left off regretting them,” she answered^ 
in a subdued voice, that struck him as full of a vague 
pathos, as if sorrow had changed all the major tones to 
minor, “ and yet it is so long since I saw them that they 
seem almost like the memory of a dream.” 

“ And you have never been tempted to revisit the 
South?” 

“No, monsieur.” 

“ My poor Louise does not travel,” interjected Mme. 
Quijada; “ she suffered nine years back from a severe ill- 
ness which shattered her nervous system. She has been 
obliged to lead a very tranquil life since then. She is our 
household fairy, the angel of the hearth, an admirable 


138 


WHOSR WAS THE HAND? 


housewife, but she cares very little for the outer world* 
Except for her morning walk, before we lazy people are up, 

' or to hear an opera now and then, she very rarely leaves 
home.'’^ 

“ You are fond of the opera, mademoiselle?’’ asked 
Elorestan. 

“ Yes, I love good music wherever it is to be heard, but 
the opL‘ra most of all. It is another world. 1 forget every- 
thing while.! am there.” 

Her face grew faintly animated as she spoke. The light 
was not a vivid light, but it was at least an awakening from 
the dull apathy he had noticed before. 

“ I should like to send you a box for the opera some 
night, if you will allow me,” he said. “1 know some 
great ladies who are occasionally generous to me, when they 
don’t care about occupying their boxes. May 1 seize the 
first opportunity and send you one?” 

” I shall be very grateful to you.” 

He was studying her face while he talked to her. The 
features were delicate and refined, the eyes were still beau- 
tiful; but sorrow had plowed deep lines about them, and 
had set its mark upon the broad white brow. Marred as it 
was by past suffering, he liked her face better than her 
cousin’s. That heavy, sensuous beauty which had held 
him captive five years ago had lost all charm for him now. 
He wanted “ the mind, the music breathing in the face ” 
— and in Mme. Quijada’s niece, with her iron-gray hair, 
lined forehead, and plain black silk gown, he saw a spiritual 
beauty which enlisted all his sympathy. That idea of a 
great sorrow suffered in the morning of life, and leaving 
its indelible mark upon the sufferer, impressed him 
strongly. 

He was floating about among his great ladies in one of 
the most brilliant salons of republican Paris on the follow- ^ 
ing evening, but he did not ask any of these luminaries for 
her box at the opera, preferring to go to the box-office and 
pay for one. It was quite true that boxes had been offered 
to him, but the occasions had been somewhat rare, and he 
had only put forward that idea in order to lessen Mile. 
Marcet’s sense of obligation. He wanted to give her pleas- 
ure, if he could, and he wanted to see more of the curious 
trio. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


139 


He sent the box ticket to Mme. Quijada, expressing the 
hope that she and her daugliter and niece would attend 
the next representation of Gounod’s “ Faust,” which was 
fixed for the following night. The lady had told him that 
she seldom went out in the evening, and he therefore 
counted on finding her disengaged. He added that he 
should have the honor of visiting their box in the course of 
the evening. He had secured a stall, so that he should 
not appear to have offered the box to the beautiful Dolores 
with the idea of exhibiting himself in her company for the 
whole of the evening; but the precaution was waste so far 
as Dolores was concerned, for Mme. Quijada’s daughter 
was not in the box, when he looked up from his ^fiace in 
the stalls to see how it was occupied. 

Mme. Quijada was in the place of honor, looking digni- 
fied and distinguished in her Spanish mantilla, fastened 
with diamond stars, and beside her, simply dressed in a 
black gown and a Marie Antoinette fichu, sat Louise Mar- 
cet, attentive and absorbed, evidently drinking in every 
note of the overture. 

He had scarcely time to wonder at Mile. Quijada’s ab- 
sence when some one in the next row said, “ How do you 
do, Florestany” and he was startled at finding his Fiver 
Lawn neighbors seated exactly in front of him. 

Mother and daughter were sitting side by side, the girl 
in her simple white gown with a bunch of Parma violets on 
her breast, the mother in dark-gray velvet and sapphires, 
placidly beautiful, with Titianesque eyes and hair, assuredly 
one of the loveliest women in that assembly, albeit her 
charms were in their summer maturity and not in their 
vernal freshness. It is not granted to many women to be 
perfectly beautiful at eight-and-thirty, but it had been 
granted to Ambrose Arden’s wife, and her husband’s heart 
thrilled with pride as he noted Florestan’s admiring look, a 
look which passed over the daughter to linger on the beauty 
of the mother. 

Florestan’s glance went back to the daughter presently, 
and he saw that she was very lovely, with a loveliness which 
echoed every note in the mother’s beauty, only the lines 
were less developed and less definite, the coloring was less 
brilliant. He looked from the girl to the young man be- 
side her, and recognized Cyril Arden, whom he had not 
seen for some years. 


140 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


There had never been anything approaching intimacy 
between Florestan and the family at Eiver Lawn, but there 
had been acquaintance and exchange of civilities from the 
commencement of the Hatrells^ residence, when the owner 
of Fountainhead was an under-graduate, subject to the 
dominion of guardians. He had thus in a manner seen 
Daisy Hatrell grow from infancy to girlhood, and he noted 
the opening flower with admiring eyes. She seemed to him 
the perfection of English girlhood; her complexion of lilies 
and roses, her hazel eyes and auburn hair, realized his ideal 
of English beauty; albeit, as in her mother’s case, the 
brilliancy of the coloring recalled the school of Titian 
rather than the school of Reynolds. 

He murmured a few words of congratulation to Ambrose 
Arden, whom he had always regarded as a scholarly and 
inoffensive person, a mere nonentity outside his library. 
He wondered much that such a man could have won the 
heart of such a woman as Clara Hatrell. 

He asked if they had ,]ust come from Lamford, and was 
told of their Italian winter. 

“ We are going back to River Lawn almost immediate- 
ly,” said Clara, “ I am longing to be among my household 
gods.” 

“ Even Venice could not make mother false to River 
Lawn,” added Daisy. 

“ And are not you glad to go home. Miss Hatrell?” 
asked Florestan. 

“ Home is always sweet— yes, I shall be glad to see all 
the dear old things again — garden, river, books, horses and 
dogs, and boats — but Venice was simply intoxicating. 
You know it, I suppose?” 

“ By heart. There are very few spots in Italy that 1 
don’t know. There goes the curtain.” 

The curtain rose, and Florestan was silent, deferring his 
visit to Mine. Quijada’s box till the end of the act. He 
had looked up once while he was talking to his friends, and 
had seen that lady’s keen black e 5 ^es watching him intent- 
ly, while her daughter, wrapped in the music, seemed un- 
conscious of all else, and certainly unconcerned about him. 
He left his place after the curtain fell and went straight to 
the box, wdiere the open door suggested that he was ex- 
pected. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 141 

“lam sorry not to see Mademoiselle Dolores/^ he said, 
when he had exchanged greetings with both ladies. 

“ She sends you her best thanks for your courteous in- 
vitation/^ replied Mrne. Quijada, “ but she very seldom 
goes out in the evening. Our appearance at that good 
Madame Duturque’s was an exceptional event. 

“ It is a pity that so much beauty should be hidden from 
the world/' said Florestan. 

Mrne. Quijada bowed her acknowledgment of this speech, 
and returned to the contemplation of the audience. She 
seemed to know everybody of consequence in that assem- 
bly — by sight; but she recognized no one as an acquaint- 
ance. 

“You were talking to some friends in the stalls just 
now," she said to Plorestan, with her eyes fixed upon the 
Arden party; “ a very handsome woman, with a handsome 
daughter. They are your compatriots, no doubt?" 

“ Yes, they are English. The lady is my next-door 
neighbor on the banks of the Thames. She has lately mar- 
ried for the second time. " 

Louise Marcet followed the direction of her aunt's eyes, 
and looked down at the stalls, where the two beautiful 
heads, with rich auburn hair, were conspicuous in a central 
position. The orchestra was silent just now, and Louise’s 
thoughts were at liberty. 

“ Is she a great lady in England, a lady of title?" asked 
Mrne. Quijada, curiously. 

“ Eo, she is the wife of a commoner. She and her hus- 
band are well off and of good family, but they are not 
great people. " 

“ What is the lady's name?" 

“ Arden. Her daughter is Miss Hatrell." 

“ Hatrell!" 

Louise Marcet repeated the name almost in a whisper. 
There w^as something in her tone that startled Elorestan, 
and he was still more surprised on looking at her to find 
her ashy pale. Her aunt saw the change in her face and 
rose quickly and supported her to the back of the box, 
where she moistened her temples with eau-de-Cologne. 

“ The poor child will be better soon," she said to Elor- 
estan; “ she has been- subject to these wretched swooning 
fits ever since her illness. Come, now, Louise, you are 
better now, are you not?" 


142 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“ Yes, I am quite well now. It was nothing. 

“ Oh, it was very nearly a faintingfit. We have just 
escaped all the fuss and anxiety of a swoon. What was it 
made you feel ill — the light and heat, or the excitement of 
the music?’* 

“ It was the light, perhaps. It gave me a kind of vertigo. 
And I was so interested in looking at Mrs. Hatred, ” she 
said, pronouncing the name with an accent which some- 
what disguised it. “Tell me about her,” she, went on, 
turning to Florestan; “ she is your friend, you say?” 

“ Yes, she is my friend.” 

“ And she has married for the second time, lately?” 

“ Quite lately, as late as last September.” 

“ And she is happy?” 

“ I suppose so. She has gone through a deal of trouble, 
but I conclude that now she has a new husband she has 
forgotten that old sorrow. Her first husband’s death was 
a tragical one. He was murdered in London, seven or 
eight years ago, by an unknown hand.” 

“ And has his murderer never been found?” asked Mme. 
Quijada, with reviving interest. 

“ Never. I suppose never will be.” 

Louise had resumed her seat, and was gazing at the two 
fair faces in the stalls, absorbed in contemplation. 

“ How old is Miss Hatrell?” she asked, presently. 

“ About eighteen.” 

“ Is she amiable?” 

“ Charming. I have never met a sweeter girl. I have 
known her from her childhood, but we have not vseen very 
much of each other. I have been a wanderer, as 1 think I 
told you the other night.” 

“ Yes,” answered Louise, absently, with her eyes fixed 
on Daisy’s happy face. “ How happy she looks, and how 
good. Was she fond of her father?” 

“ Very fond. She was only a child when she lost him, 
but she was devoted to him and he to her.” 

“ Y^ou remember him? You knew him well?” 

“ Fairly well, and liked him much. He was as frank 
and open as the day — a man without guile.” 

“ I do not like that other man,” said Louise, still look- 
ing down at the stalls. 

“ Which man?” 

“ The second husband.” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


143 


“ Why not! How can you like or dislike at a glance?’"’ 

“ I always do. I liked and trusted you at the first 
glance. I distrust him.” 


CHAPTER XII. 
florestan’s .ajission. 

Forrstan lunched with Mr. and Mrs. Arden on the day 
after their meeting at the opera. It was (he lady who gave 
him the invitation. He had always been a favorite of hers, 
since the time when he sold the meadow, and earlier, when 
he had just left Eton for the superior independence of the 
University; and in this busy Paris, crowded with strange 
faces, she had been pleased to meet with a familiar face, a 
face associated with the cloudless years of her first mar- 
riage. Everything was dear to her that brought back the 
memory of that time. 

Was she happy with her second husband? No, she was 
not: unless gratitude and a placid submission to the decree 
of Fate mean happiness. 

She had drifted into this second marriage upon the strong 
tide of Ambrose Arden’s passionate love — a love which had 
gathered force with each long year of waiting, and which 
had become a power that no ordinary woman could resist. 
Such a passion, so exceptional in its patient endurance, its 
intense concentration, will compel love, or at least the sur- 
render of liberty, and the submission to woman’s destiny, 
which is, for the most part, to belong to some one stronger 
than herself. 

She had submitted to this mastery, and she was grateful 
for that devoted affection which knew no wavering, which 
had lost none of its romantic intensity with the waning of 
the honey-moon. No woman could be heedless of such a 
love as this, from such a man as Ambrose Arden; and his 
wife was deeply touched by his idolatry, and gave liim back 
all that a woman can give whose heart is cold as marble. 
Tenderness, deference, companionship she could give, and 
she gave them; but the lo^e she had lavished on Robert 
Hatreli was a fire that had burned out. It was not in Am- 
brose Arden’s power to rekindle the flame. 

Never since the first year of her widowhood had her 
thoughts recurred so incessantly to the past as they had 
done since her second marriage. In her life with her 


144 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


daughter, they two as sole companions, something of her 
girlish gayety had returned to her. She had become al- 
most a girl again in adapting herself to a girl companion. 
In her anxiety to keep the burden of sorrow otf those youth- 
ful shoulders she had shaken off the shadow of her own sad 
memories, and had given herself up to girlhood’s small 
pleasures and frivolous interests. But since her marriage 
— since her chief companion had been Ambrose Arden and 
not Daisy, a deep cloud of melancholy had come down 
upon her mind. The image of her first husband had be- 
come a ghost that walked beside her path and stood beside 
her bed; and the memory of her happiest years had become 
a haunting memory that came between her and every charm 
and every interest that her present life could offer. 

Thus it was that she had been eager to see more of Flor- 
estan, and had asked him to luncheon at their hotel. 

This time they were at the Bristol, and it was in a salon 
on the second floor, looking out upon the Place V^endonie 
that they received Gilbert Florestan. 

Daisy beamed upon him in a white straw hat trimmed 
with spring flowers, and a neat little gray checked gown, 
made by one of those epicene tailors who give their minds 
to the embellishment of the female figure. She had a 
bunch of lilies of the valley pinned upon her breast, a 
bunch which Cyril had just bought for her in the line 
Castiglione. They had been running about Paris all the 
morning, Cyril protesting that the great city was a vulgar, 
glaring, dusty hole, yet very delighted to attend his sweet- 
heart ii! her explorations, and to show her everything that 
was worth looking at. 

“I hope 1 have satiated her with churches,” he said; 
“ we have driven all over Paris, and have gone up and 
down so many steps that I feel as if 1 had been working on 
the tread-mill. We wound up with a scamper in Pere la 
Chaise. ” 

“It was a scamper,” exclaimed Daisy, “lie would 
hardly let me look at any of the monuments. They are 
all mixed up in my mind, a chaos of bronze and marble, 
classical temples and Egyptian obelisks — Balzac, Rachel, 
the Russian princess, who was burned to death at a ball, 
Desclee, Thiers, Abelard, and Heloise. 1 could spend a 
long day roaming about in that place of names and memo- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


145 


ries, and Cyril took me through the alleys almost at a 
run. 

“ Why should a girl want to prowl about a cemetery, 
unless she is a ghoul, and is mapping out the place in order 
to go back there in the night and dig?’’ Cyril protested 
with a disgusted air. “ I would rather have to stand and 
wait while you looked at all the shops in the Rue de la 
Paix.” 

The luncheon was a very lively meal, for both Cyril and 
Flores! an were full of talk and vivacity, and Daisy talked 
as much as they let her, leaving Ambrose Arden and his 
wife free to look on and listen. They had spent their 
morning together among the second-hand book-shops on the 
Quai Voltaire, where the scholar had found two or three, 
treasures in sixteenth-century literature, and where the 
scholar’s wife had hunted for herself among volumes of a 
lighter and more modern character, and had selected some 
small additions to the carefully chosen library at River 
Lawn, a collection which had been growing ever since 
Robert Ilatrell’s death had made her in some way depend- 
ent upon books for companionship. 

After lunch Florestan suggested a pilgrimage to St. 
Denis, and offered to act as cicerone, an offer which Daisy 
accepted eagerly, so a roomy carriage was ordered, and 
Mrs. Arden, her daughter, and the two young men set out 
for the resting-place of royalties, leaving Ambrose free to 
go back to the book-shops. 

It isn’t a bad day for a drive,” said Cyril, as the 
landau bowled along the broad level road outside the city, 
“ but I am sorry that we are pandering to Miss Hatrell’s 
ghoulish tastes by hunting after more graves.” 

There was more discussion that evening as to how long 
the River Lawn party should remain in Paris. They had 
arrived from Italy two days before, and while they were in 
Veidce, Mrs. Arden had seemed anxif)us to return to Er)g- 
land, and had confessed herself homesick. In Paris she 
seemed disposed for delay. 

“ I can’t quite understand you, Clara,” said her hus- 
band; “all your yearning for home seems to have left 
you.” 

“ I am as anxious as ever to go home, but there is some- 
thing I want to do in Paris. ” 


146 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“ V\'hat is that?’^ 

“ Oh, it is a very small matter. I would rather not talk 
about it.” 

Ambrose looked at her wonderingly. This was the first 
time since their marriage that she had refused to tell him 
anything. He did not press the point, however. The 
matter in question might be some feminine frivolity, some 
business with the dress-makers or milliners which it was no 
part of a husband’s business to know. 

Later on in the evenirighis wife asked a question apropos 
to nothing. 

“ Does Mr. Florestan know Paris particularly well?” 

Cyril answered her. 

“ He tells me he knows Paris by heart, and all her works 
and ways. He has lived here a good deal olf and on; and 
now he has established his pied d terre in the Champs 
Elysees, and means to winter here and summer at Fount- 
ainhead. You will have him for a neighbor, Daisy. I 
hope you are not going to make me jealous by taking too 
much notice of him.” 

He spoke with the easy gayety of a man who knows him- 
self beloved, and who is so secure in the possession of his 
sweetheart’s affection that he can afford to make a jest of 
the possibilities which might alarm other men. Daisy first 
blushed, and then laughed at the suggestion. 

“Poor Mr. Florestan!” she sighed, “no father or 
mother, no sister or brother! Nobody to be happy or un- 
happy about! What an empty life his must be.” 

“ Oh, the fellow is lucky enough. He has a pretty old 
place and a good income. He is young and clever — and — 
well — yes — I suppose he is handsome.” 

Daisy offered no opinion. 

“ Decidedly handsome,” said Ambrose Arden, looking 
up from the cliess-board at which he and his wife were seated. 

Clara had never touched a card since the nightly rubber 
came to an end with her first husband’s tragical dekh; but 
she played chess nearly every evening with her second hus- 
band, who was a fine player, and intensely enjoyed the 
game. His wife j)layed just well enough to make the game 
interesting, and then there was for him an unfailing de- 
light in having her for his antagonist; the delight of watch- 
ing her thoughtful face, with the varying expression as she 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


147 


deliberated upon her play; the delight of touching her 
hand now and then as it moved among the pieces; the de- 
light of hearing her low sweet voice. This life could give 
him no greater joy than her companionship. It had been 
the end and aim of his existence for long and patient years. 

Mrs. Arden sent Florestan a telegram the next morning, 
asking him to call upon her as early as he could before 
luncheon. Her husband was going to spend his morning 
at the sale of a famous library, and she would bo free to 
carry out an idea which she had entertained since her meet- 
ing with Florestan at the opera. 

Mr. Arden had not been gone more than a quarter of an 
hour before Florestan was announced. Cyril and Daisy 
were sight-seeing, and Mrs. Arden was alone in the salon. 

She was sitting near one of the windows, with her 
traveling-desk on a table before her. 

She thanked Florestan for his prompt attention to her 
request, and motioned him to a seat on the other side of 
the writing-table. 

“ 1 am going to ask you to do me a great favor, Mr. 
Florestan,’^ she said, very seriously, “ although our friend- 
ship has been so interrupted and so casual (hat 1 have 
hardly any claim upon you. ’’ 

All that was ardent and frank and generous in the man 
who affected cynicism was awakened by this dejorecating 
appeal, and perhaps still more by the pathetic expression 
of the soft hazel eyes and the faint tremulousness of the 
lower lip. 

“ You have the strongest claim/^ he answered, eagerly. 
“ There is nothing 1 would not do to show myself worthy 
to be considered your friend. If we have not seen very 
much of each other we have at least been. acquainted for a 
long time. 1 remember your daughter when she was 
almost a baby. I remember — 

He checked himself, as he was approaching a theme that 
might pain her. 

“You remember my husband,’’ she said, interpreting 
his embarrassment. “ It is of him I want to talk to you. 
I think you are good and true, Mr. Florestan, and I am 
going to trust you with the secrets of the dead. I am going 
to show yoq some old letters — letters written to my dear 
dead husband— which I would not show to anybody in this 


148 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


world if I did not hope that some good, some satisfaction 
to me and to my daughter might come out of the light 
these letters can give/’ 

“ My dear Mrs. Arden, you do not surely hope that 
after all these years the murderer will be found through 
any clew that the past can afiFord?” 

“ I don’t know what I hope — but I want to find a 
woman who loved my husband very tenderly and truly be- 
fore ever I saw his face. She was a friendless girl in this 
city, a girl who had to work for her living, but her letters 
are the outcome of a refined nature, and I feel a strange 
and melancholy interest in her. My heart yearns toward 
the woman who loved my husband in his youth, and wlio 
might have been his wife but for difference of caste.” 

” Did your husband tell you about this youthful love 
affair?” 

“ He alluded to it laughingly once or twice during our 
happy married life; but 1 knew nothing more than that he 
had once been in love with a French grisette until the 
week before my second marriage. I had a curious fancy be- 
fore that great change in my life to go back upon the past.” 
There was a grave regretfuless in her tone at this j)oint 
which was a revelation to Florestan. “ And 1 occupied my- 
self fora whole night, when every one else in the house had 
gone to bed, in looking over my husband’s papers. 1 had 
been through them more than once before, and had classi- 
fied and arranged them as well as I could; but I suppose 1 
was not very business-like in my way of doing tliis, for 
among some commonplace letters from the old college 
friends I found a little packet of letters in a woman’s 
hand, which I had overlooked before.” 

She opened her desk as she spoke, and took out a small 
packet of letters tied with a piece of red tape. There had 
been no sentimental indulgence in the way of satin ribbon 
for the milliner’s poor little letters. The tape was faded 
and old, and it was the same piece which Kobert Ilatrell’s 
own hand had tied round them. 

” Please read one or two of those letters, and tell me if 
they speak to your heart as they spoke to mine,” she said, 
as she put the packet into Florestan’s hand. 

He untied the tape, counted the letters, seven in all, and 
then he began to read the letters of earliest date. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


140 


“ Rue Ciiauve Souris, Faubourg St. Antoine, 

“ May Wi. 

“ It was like a day spent in heaven while we were to- 
gether yesterday. I felt as if it was years and years since 
I had seen green fields and a river. Oli, the beaiitifid river, 
and the island where we dined! 1 did not think there was 
anytliing so lovely within an hour’s journey from Paris. 
Ah, how good it was of you to give a poor hard-working 
girl so much pleasure. 1 have been in Paris more than a 
year, and no one ever showed me a glimpse of green fields 
until yesterday. My brother was too busy with his inven- 
tions, and there was no one else. I wonder at your good- 
ness, that you should take so much trouble for a poor girl; 
and that you should not be ashamed to be seen with any 
one so shabby and insignificant.” 

Three other letters followed, telling the same story of 
a Sunday in the environs of Paris, of the woods and the 
river, and the rapture of being with him. Gradually the 
pen had grown' bolder, and it was of love the girl wrote to 
her lover — an humble, confiding, romantic girlish love, 
which took no thought for the morrow, asked no epiestions, 
suffered from no agonies of doubt. She wrote as it her 
happiness were to know no change — as if those Sunday ex- 
cursions to pleasant places were to go on forever. She told 
him how she had gone to mass before she met him at the 
railway station, or the steamboat pier, and how she had 
prayed for him at the altar. 

The later letters had a more serious tone, and breathed 
the fear that her dream must come to an end. 

“ It has been like a dream to know you and be loved by 
you,” she wrote; “ but is the dream to end in darkness, 
and the long dull life that would be left for me if you were 
to go away and forget me? I suppose it must be so. I 
have been too happy to remember that such happiness could 
not last. You wilTgo back to your own country, and fall 
in love with a young English lady, and forget that you ever 
spent happy days on the Seine, laughing and talking with 
your poor Toinette. Y"ou will forget the arbor on the island 
where we dined in the twilight, while music and singing 
went past us in the boats, while we sat hidden behind vine 
leaves, and heard everything without being seen. Oh, how 
sweet it was! I shall never see any more stars like those 


150 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


that shone down upon us as we came from Marley one 
night, sitting side by side on a bench on the roof of the 
traiji. I shall never see the river in Paris without think- 
ing that it is the same river on which our boat has drifted, 
oh, so lazily, while we have talked and forgotten everything 
except our own faces and our own voices. All that was 
beautiful in the river and the landscape seemed not out- 
side us, but a part of ourselves and of our love."’"’ 

There was more in the same strain, but later the key 
changed to saddest minor. 

“ I know you cannot marry me; indeed, 1 never thought 
or hoped to be your wife. 1 only wanted our love to go on 
as long as it could. I wanted it to go on forever, asking 
no more than to see you now and then, once a week, once 
in a month even — ah, even once in a year! 1 could live 
all though a long dull year in the hope of seeing you for 
one blessed hour on New-year^s-day. Is that too much to 
ask? You caji not guess how little v/ould content me — 
anything except to lose you forever. The day that you say 
to me, ‘ Good-bye, Toinette, we shall never meet again, ^ 
will be the day of my death. You are the better part of 
my life. I can not live without you. I think of you in 
every hour of the day. I think of you with every stitch 
my needle makes through the long hours in which I sit at 
work. The sprig of willow you picked when we were in 
the boat last Sunday is like a living thing to me — as pre- 
cious as if it had a soul and could sympathize with me in 
my love and my sorrow.’’ 

Florestan read on till the last word in the last letter. 

“Do those sad little letters touch you as they touched 
me?” asked Clara. 

“Yes, they are pretty little letters. They are full of 
a tender, sentimental love which might mean much or 
little. There is no knowing how much reality there is in 
all this sentiment — women are actresses from their cradle. 
They can simulate everything — love or hate or pride or 
jealousy; nothing comes amiss to them. But there is a 
pretty little air of self-abnegation in these letters which 
takes my fancy, just as it took yours.” 

“I believe that (he sentiment in them is real,” said 
Clara, “ and I want to know wliat became of this poor girl 
after the last letter was written. 1 want to know whether 
she is living or dead. Kemember, it was her name that 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


151 


was used to lure my husband to his death. I'here must 
have been some link between the murderer and that girl.’’ 

“Ah, 1 remember. There was a woman’s name men- 
tioned.” 

“ Yes, Colonel MacDonald heard the name. It was An- 
toinette. He had heard my husband speak of a grisette 
with whom he had once been in love.” 

“ Do you think the girl was concerned in the murder?” 

“ The girl who wrote those letters? No, assuredly not. ” 

“ There are women whose slighted love turns to remorse- 
less hate,” said Florestan. 

“Not such a woman as the writer of those letters. She 
is so humble, so unselfish, she accepts her fate in advance. 
No, I am sure she was a good woman. 1 want to find her 
if I can, to help her if she is poor and friendless. I want 
to find her for her own sake; but still more for mine. She 
may be able to give the clew to the murderer. IHr name 
was used as a lure, and very few people can have knowii 
that Robert ever cared for that girl. The man who made 
that vile use of her name must have known of lhat old love 
affair. He may have been the brother of whom she 
writes.” 

“ My dear Mrs. Arden, would it not be wiser — in your 
circumstances, with new ties — a husband who worships 
you, a daughter who adores you — would it not be wiser to 
draw a curtain over that one dreadful scene in your life — 
that one terrible shock which you suffered nearly eight 
years ago?” 

“ 1 can not! I can not forget the man I loved with all 
my heart and strength,” exclaimed Clara, passionately. 
“ Do you think because I have married again that he is 
forgotten? Do you think that I have forgotten his life, 
which was so bright and happy, so full of gladness for him- 
self and others, or his miserable death? No, 1 have not 
forgotten! 1 have married a good man whom I honor and 
estee^. 1 am as happy as the most devoted love can make 
me; but I do not forget. Ever since I found those letters 
1 have been brooding over the possibility of the murderer 
being discovered by that woman’s agency.” 

“ Do you think that if her brother was the murderer she 
would betray him?” 

“ 1 think she would no more have forgiven his murderer 
than 1 have — even if he is her brother.” 


152 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“ But she would liardly put a rope round his neck/^ 

“ Perhaps not. Only find her for me, if you can, Mr. 
Florestan, and I shall be deeply grateful. You who know 
Paris so well, and who are living here, may have opportuni- 
ties.'’’ 

“ If she is to be found I will find her. But these letters 
were written more than twelve years ago, and the cleverest 
police agent in Paris might fail in tracing her after such 
an interval. Pemember, we do not even know her sur- 
name. The letters have only one signature— Toinette.” 

“ There is the address of the house in which she lived.” 

“ That is the only clew. We must begin upon that.” 

“ You are very good. You can understand, perhaps, 
why I appeal to you instead of to my husband. In the first 
place, he is a dreamer and thinker rather than a man of 
action. He knows very little of Parisian life, and he would 
not know how to set to work. And in the second place, it 
might wound him to know that my mind has been dwell- 
ing upon the past.” 

“ I understand perfectly. I conclude that you have told 
him nothing about these letters.” 

“ Not a word.” 

“ There is one circumstance connected with your hus- 
band’s death which has always mystified me,” said Flor- 
estan, after a thoughtful pause. “ How came the mur- 
derer, a foreigner, and altogether unconnected with your 
husband’s life at Larnford, to be so well informed about 
his plans — to know that on such a day and at such an hour 
he would be on his way to Lincoln’s Inn with a large sum 
of money upon his person? The man’s plans had evidently 
been made some days in advance — the lodging was taken 
with one deadly intent. The woman who acted as an ac- 
complice must have been taught her part in advance; the 
flight to the Riviera with the money must have been delib- 
erately thought out, for there was not an hour lost in the 
disposal of the notes. A little hesitation, a few hours’ de- 
lay, and the police would have been able to track the plun- 
der. Everything was arranged and carried out with a dia- 
bolical precision which argues foreknowledge.” 

“ I have puzzled over the same question till my brain 
has reeled,” answered Clara. “ Some one must have given 
the information — one of our servants — a lawyer’s clerk, 
perhaps. I dismissed every servant we had at the time, as 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


153 


soon as ] recovered from my illness. I would not have 
anybody about me who might even unconsciously have 
helped to bring about my husband death. All our serv- 
ants knew what was going to happen. We talked of the 
purchase very often, and at dinner on the evening before 
Kobert went to London we discussed his visit to the bank 
and to the lawyers, and his appointment to lunch with 
Colonel MacDonald at the club. 

“ It is just possible that the murderer was in your house 
that evening, and that he got every detail from one of 
your maid-servants. Women are such fools, and women 
of that class will believe everything that a smooth tongue 
tells them. It was the year after the war, a time when 
London swarmed with exiled communists. It was I)ossible 
that this girks brother was among them, that he harbored 
an old grudge against her lover — that he took pains to lind 
out all he could about your husband’s circumstances, and, 
hearing of the purchase money which was to be carried 
from the bank to the lawyer’s office, conceived the des- 
perate idea of a murder and robbery in broad daylight, in 
a house full of people. 1 take it that the police would 
make some investigations in your household, although the 
murder occurred in London?” 

“ I know very little of what happened at that time. I 
was too ill to be told anything that was being done — and 
after 1 had recovered I had too great a horror of the past. 
1 dared not speak about my husband’t death. Years have 
brought a calmness. I can think of it now — and reason 
about it — though 1 shall never understand why God cut 
short that happy life in so cruel a manner — I shall never 
understand the wisdom of my heavy chastisement.” 

Florestan was silent, pitying her with all his heart, both 
for the husband she had lost, and for the husband to whom 
she had given herself in a loveless union. He had seen 
enough of Ambrose Arden and his wife to divine that there 
was profound affection on the husband’s side, and on the 
wife’s only the pensive submission of a woman who has 
given away her life in self-abnegation, pitying the passion 
which she can not reciprocate. 

Daisy and her betrothed came into the room at this 
moment, she laden with bunches of white lilac and Mare- 
chal Niel roses, as tribute’ to her mother. It seemed to 
Florestan as if Spring itself had come dancing into the room 


154 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


incarnate in that graceful figure in a cream-colored frock 
and sailor hat, shining upon him out of those sunny hazel 
eyes, giving warmth and brightness to the atmosphere. 

She shook hands with Florestan in the friendliest way — 
too friendly to be flattering to a man who was accustomed 
to exercise a somewhat disturbing influence upon the other 
sex. But a girl who is engaged to be married has some- 
times no eyes for any man except her lover. Florestan 
had experienced that kind of thing; and he had ex- 
perienced the other kind of thing from girls who are ever 
on the alert for fresh conquests, and who are only stimu- 
lated to audacity by the knowledge that they have secured 
one man for their bond-slave. 

Daisy had no hidden thoughts, she was just as simple 
and unalfected, just as unconscious of her own charms as 
she had been four years ago when she was still a child, with 
all a child^s thoughts and pleasures. How different she 
was from the type of woman he had once compared with 
Dante’s Beatrice, with Petrarch’s Laura; the splendid and 
grandiose among woman, the queen of beauty in the 
world’s tournament. That magnificent type had lost its 
fascination for him now. 

lie stayed to luncheon, hi^lf reluctantly, yet unable to 
resist his inclination to linger. Ambrose Arden came in 
from his book sale flushed with triumph. He had gratified 
desires of long standing by the purchase of certain first 
editions of French classics — Villon, Ronsard, Clement 
Marot. His son made light of the father’s craze for books 
with a certain imprint. 

“ What does it matter who printed a book, or where, or 
when,” he cried. “ The book is only a voice — the voice 
of the dead. It is a spiritual thing. It is the soul be- 
longing to a body that has long been dust. How can it 
matter what outward form the soul wears — upon what 
kind of rags the divine speech has been printed — what kind 
of leather keeps the book from falling to pieces. 1 am 
amazed when 1 see people going into ecstasies about binding 
— except as furnilure to brighten a room. For a book 1 
really care about the outward form is of not the smallest 
account to me.” 

“ You are young, Cyril,” his father answered, gently. 
“ Youth has the kernel of the nut; age must be content 
with ihe husk. Old men have to invent pleasures and pas- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 155 

sions. There is so much that they have left behind them 
forever. 

“ That is a very reasonable explanation of the collector’s 
mania, my dear father,^’ answered Cyril, “ but it is a 
great deal too early in the day for you to begin to meditate 
upon the consolations of old age. The sun of your life is 
still in the meridian. Daisy and I are like the yomig 
birds just peeping out of our nests at the rosy glow of 
dawn.^’ 

The River Lawn party left Paris two days after Clara’s 
interview with Gilbert Florestan, he seeing them off at the 
station, an attention which, to Cyril Arden, seemed some- 
what superfluous. Superfluous, also the posy of Marechal 
Niel roses which Florestan handed into the railway car- 
riage after the ladies had taken their seats. 

“ You will have your own roses, to-morrow,” he said to 
Mrs. Arden, “ and if they are not quite so fine as these 1 
dare say you will like them better because they are home 
grown. I shall think of you all at River Lawn, and of my 
empty house close by.” 

“ Why don’t you come and fill it?” asked Clara. 

“ I mean to do so before long. I shall give u}) a vagrant 
diplomacy and settle down as a small Berkshire squire. I 
begin to feel that I am not of the stuff which makes embassa- 
dors, and that a roving life is all very well till a man ap- 
proaches his thirtieth birthday, but begins to pall after- 
ward. My Paris is as familiar as an old song — 1 know all 
her tricks and her manners.” 

He shook hands with mother and daughter, said good- 
bye, yet lingered and said good-bye again when stern offi- 
cials ordered him off. He loitered at the carriage door till 
the very last moment. 

He sighed as he walked away from the terminus, and he 
was full of thought through all the dreary length of the 
Rue de Lafayette. 

“ Happy fellow, to be beginning life with such a girl as 
that for his companion,” he mused, thinking of Cyril. 
“ She is so gentle, yet so bold, so fresh and frank and gay 
and clever — a child in ignorance of all base things; a 
woman in power to understand and appreciate all that is 
great and noble. . If ever I care again for womankind my 


156 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


love will be just such a girl as that. I wonder if there are 
many such, and where they are to be found.'’'’ 

He wondered, too, though he scarcely shaped the 
thought, whether if the world were rich in girls as innocent 
and as bright, endowed with all the qualities that made 
Margaret llatrell charming, he should be attracted to any 
other specimen of the kind as he had been attracted to her. 
He wondered whether it might not be the individual and 
not the type which had fascinated him. 

He pondered these questions as if in a purely speculative 
mood, but was careful not to answer them. They were 
doubts which floated through his mind like cloudlets in a 
summer sky. And in his mind there floated also the im- 
age of a girTs face, fresh and fair, with no taint or tarnish 
of the world, no artificial embellishment of paint or pow- 
der, pencil or brush, upon its pure young beauty. The 
image haunted him long after the train had carried Clara 
Arden and her daughtfer to Calais, long after they had 
settled down quietly at River Lawn. 

He did not forget the commission which Mrs. Arden had 
intrusted to him. He went to the Rue Chauve Souris on 
the morning after that prolonged leave-taking at the sta- 
tion, and found the house, which, if there had been no 
alteration in the numbering of the street within the last 
twelve 3jears, must once have sheltered the girl who loved 
Robert Hatrell. 

It was a narrow house, with a shoemaker^s -shop on the 
ground floor, kept by one of those small traders who do 
more in the way of repairing old boots and shoes than of 
selling new ones. There was a side door, which was open, 
and a narrow passage, leading to a staircase, where there 
was just enough light to reveal the dirt and shabbiiiess of 
the walls and the indications of poverty upon every landing. 

Florestan went to the top of the house without meeting 
anybody; but he heard the voices of children upon the first 
floor, a domestic quarrel upon the second, with voices raised 
to their highest pitch in accents of recrimination, and on 
the top story a woman was singing a monotonous senti- 
mental melody, in apparent unconsciousness of the strife 
below. It was evident there was separate households upon 
each story. 

The sing-song voice of the woman in the garret was so 
suggestive of a peaceful menage that Florestan took cour- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


157 


age to knock at the door, which was opened by the singer, 
a faded woman with a gentle, long-suffering cast of counte- 
nance, a washed-out cotton gown, and a little cashmere 
shawl pinned across attenuated shoulders. A baby in the 
cradle in the corner near the hearth accounted for the 
monotonous chant which Florestan had heard outside. 

He apologized for his intrusion, and told her he was 
in search of a woman who had lived in that house 
twelve years before. Would she direct him to the oldest 
inhabitant of the house? 

“ You won^t have far to go to find her,’^ answered the 
woman. “ There^s only one lodger who has been in this 
house over two or three years, and 1 fancy that one must 
have lived here ever since the taking of the Bastile. No- 
body knows how old she is, but it wouldn’t surprise me to 
be told she was a hundred. If she has sense enough or 
memory enough to answer your questions she ought to be 
able to tell you anything you want to know about former 
lodgers.” 

“ Who is this person?” 

“ Mademoiselle de Lafont, a pensioner of a noble family 
in Touraine. She is a distant relation of the Marquis de 
Lafont, who allows her a tiny pension. Her grandfather 
and grandmother were guillotined in ’92, and her father 
was left a helpless lad in Paris. She will tell you her 
story. She loves to talk of her youth and its dangers. 
And though she has a very poor memory for events that 
happened yesterday, she remembers the smallest things 
connected with her childhood.” 

“ If that is the condition of her mind, she may have for- 
gotten a lodger of a dozen years ago,” suggested Gilbert. 

“ I can’t answer for that. I can only tell you that she 
must have been in this house with your lodger. If you 
want to talk to her I can take you down to her room. She 
is very poor, but her room is always clean and neat. She 
has just strength enough left to attend to that, and when 
her sweeping and dusting are done she sits all day by the 
window rolling her thumbs and talking to her canary bird.” 

“ Poor old soul! I feel interested in her from your de- 
scription, and shall be very much obliged if you will intro- 
duce me to her.” 


158 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


CHAPTER Xin. 

UNDER-CUKRENTS. 

The woman looked at her sleeping baby to assure herselt 
that he was not likely to awake for the next few minutes, 
and then accompanied Florestan to the landing below, 
.where she knocked at the door of a room toward the front 
of the house. A feeble old voice called to her to enter, 
and she entered, leaving Florestan outside. 

There was a brief parley, and then he was admitted to a 
narrow slip of a room with a deep-set window, and a small 
fire-place in the corner. The furniture consisted of an old 
walnut- wood wardrobe, with heavy brass handles, much 
too large for the room, a narrow bedstead, a comfortable 
arm-chair, and a small round table. There was a closet on 
one side of the room, which served the old lady for her 
toilet. 

The wall space, where not obscured by the (all ward- 
robe, was covered with old-fashioned prinls and colored 
lithographs, in which might have been read “ an abstract 
and brief chronicle of the time since the fall of the Bas- 
tile, which was depicted in one of the most noticeable of 
the engravings. They were for the most part scenes of 
revolution or bloodshed, the Death of the Due d’Enghiem, 
the Days of June, the Coup d’Etat, the Execution of 
Maximilian, the Commune. There were coarsely executed 
prints cut from the illustrated newspapers of half a century 
ago, in marked contrast with the superior art of later years. 
The old woman sat in her arm-chair by the wdndow neatly 
clad in a black alpaca gown and a picturesejue white cap, 
her missal and rosary on the table by her side, and her 
canary chirruping in his cage in the window. 

The withered old face had all the traces of good looks 
and of good blood, and there was no lack of niemcry or in- 
telligence in the keen gray eyes which scrutinized the 
stranger. 

“ Take the trouble to seat yourself, monsieur, said 
Mile. Lafont, pointing graciously to the only unoccupied 
chair, which was placed opposite her own. “My good 
friend yonder ’’ — with a glance at the door through which 
Florestan^s introducer had retired— “ tells me you #ant 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


159 


information about some former lodger. I was born in tliis 
house, ajid 1 have lived in it nearly ninety years. 

“ That is a curious thing to happen in such a restless 
city as Paris/’ said Florestan, interested in the sad old 
face, the dull and barren life. “ How came it, made- 
moiselle, that your life was thus uneventful?” 

“ There are many such lives in every great city, mon- 
sieur — lives that are of little more account than the life of 
a limpet on a rock. My father was flung like a weed on 
the ocean of Paris, a lad of sixteen, without friends or 
home. His father was a lawyer, prosperous, successful; 
his mother was a beauty, sought after by the best people 
in Paris. All his boyhood had been spent in the stormy 
atmosphere of the Kevolution, but the troubles of those 
dreadful years seemed hardly to have touched his home. 
His father was in constant employment, and had a voice 
in the Senate, where his eloquence made him a man of 
mark; his mother’s friends still flocked round her, except 
when now and then the guillotine made a sudden gap in 
the circle. The brotherhood in whose house my father had 
been educated were broken up and dispersed. He was at 
home in idleness, enjoying his life and all the fever of the 
time — waiting till his father should have leisure to take up 
the thread of his education, hoping to follow in his father’s 
footsteps as a successful advocate, full of belief in the 
golden harvest of that bloody seed which was being sown 
broadcast through the fairest cities of France. Boy as he 
was, he was already an ardent politician, and had the eutree 
of more than one club where opinion was ultra-red. One 
night he went home from a turbulent debate at one of his 
clubs to find the servants in tribulation and his home deso- 
late. His father and mother had been arrested and taken 
to the conciergerie. Within a week they had both passed 
by the gate which f'ouquier Tinville kept on the road to 
Eternity. All their fine friends were powerless to help 
them, or afraid to interfere. My grandfather had neglected 
his privale interests for the cause of the Kepublic, and he 
died deeply in debt. Creditors took possession of house 
and property, and my father wandered about the streets 
homeless and hungry, too proud to appeal to his father’s 
friends.” 

The old woman paused for a few moments, and then, 
seeing that her listener was warmly interested, continued 


160 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


ill her slow, deliberate accents, quietly reciting a story 
which she had told to all comers for more than half a oent- 
ury: 

“ Chance brought him in his desolation to the threshold 
of this house. He sat down upon the step in front of the 
shop-door; not because he chose that place above any 
other, but because he had reached the limit of his strength, 
and must needs drop somewhere. The shop is kept by a 
shoemaker now, and it was kept by a shoemaker then, a 
Proven9al, whose father was head-gardener to Madame du 
Barry, and who had come to Paris to seek his fortune in 
the golden days of court favor. Madame du Barry's head 
was laid low, and court favor was all at an end; Fran9ois 
Vial and his wife were struggling on as best they might, 
mending and making shoes for Red Republicans." 

“ They were not too poor to have pity on your father, I 
take it," said Florestan. 

Their hearts were larger than their means, monsieur. 
They saw a fainting lad sitting on their doorstep, with his 
head leaning against the door-post, and they took him in, 
and fed him, and comforted him. He told them that he 
was the son of suspects who had been guillotined, but that 
did not frighten them. They took him into their home 
and nursed him through a long illness, a low fever, the re- 
sult of grief and exposure. He had been wandering about 
the streets nearly a week before they took compassion upon 
him — wandering about and sleeping in dark corners of the 
city, with only a few pence between him and absolute 
starvation. Fran9ois Vial and his wife were childless, and 
they took a fancy to the orphan, and taught him their 
trade. He had no other friend in the world to help him, 
for those of his father's friends who had not been swept 
away upon the strong tide of blood had left the country, 
and there was no one to help him except these good peo- 
ple. So he who was to have been an advocate and a sena- 
tor was content to make and mend shoes, and he fell in 
love with an orphan niece of Fran9ois Vial~a little fair- 
haired girl who had comforted him in his sorrow for his 
dead parents — and he married her when he was three-and- 
twenty, and when the new-born century was opening in 
splendor and glory. He had quite reconciled himself to 
his humble avocation. He was content to remain what 
Destiny had made him. His mind seemed to haVe fash- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


161 


ioned itself easily to that liinnble sphere. I have often 
wondered that it was so, that the blood in his veins did not 
revolt against that daily drudgery, that narrow sordid 
life.’^ 

“ It was strange, assuredly, that he never tried to get 
back into the sphere from which he had dropped. 

“ I think that in that long illness of his, when his mind 
was wandering most of the time, all the links that con- 
nected him with his past life may have weakened, till the 
influence of that life was nearly lost, and he was able to 
begin a new existence among low-born people without feel- 
ing much pain in the change. At any rate he never made 
any struggle to regain his lost place in the world — and 
later, when Francois Vial and his wife had saved enough 
money to buy a little vineyard and olive orchard in Pro- 
vence, he was glad to take to the business and the house in 
which he had worked, and it was in this house that 1, his 
only surviving offspring, was born. ” 

“ How came it that you never married, mademoiselle?’^ 
asked Florestan, after ho had expressed all due interest in 
her narrative. 

“ Those who asked me to marry were people with whom 
I could not have been happy. It may be that something 
of the pride of race which had died out of my father’s 
mind was revived in me. I always felt it a hard thing 
that my father, Eugene Lafont -de Lafont, as 1 saw the 
name written in old documents — should he a shoemaker. 
This street was not so shabby in my youth as it has been 
for the last forty years; but it was not a very grand neigh- 
borhood even then; and I used to walk in the fashionable 
quarters of Paris of a Sunday afternoon with my father, 
and used to feel that Fate had used us hardly. 1 saw the 
Marquise de Lafont drive by in her carriage, and my fa- 
ther told me thatl was of the same race. He made a joke 
of the difference between us; but it cut me to the quick 
that we who were of the same family should be so wide 
apart. My father and mother both died before I was 
thirty, and I was left quite alone in the world. They had 
just been able to make a living, but they had saved only as 
much as served to pay their debts and to bury them. The 
house and the business passed into other hands, but I 
stayed here like a piece of old furniture. I have been a 
lodger in this room in which you find me ever since my 


162 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


father's death. I was able to earn my own living when 1 
was eighteen by fine needle-work, and I worked at the 
same business for fifty years. I was seventy years of age 
before I ever needed help from any one; but at that age 
my sight began to fail, and it would have gone hard with 
me if the Marquise de Lafont had not chanced to hear 
about me from the mistress of the large lingerie shop for 
which I had worked all those years. The marquise took 
pity upon my helplessness, and pleaded my cause with the 
marquis, who came to see me, and looked through my 
papers, and made out my father's relationship to the great 
family. Convinced of this, he granted me a small pension, 
which his house-steward has paid me ever since. His gen- 
erosity has made my declining days peaceful and free from 
care. I rise from my bed every morning with the assur- 
ance that my daily bread is provided for me; and I know 
that I shall not lie in a pauper's grave, for my noble kins- 
man has promised me a niche in the family vault at Pere 
la Chaise. I pray for the marquis and his family every 
day, and I hope that the prayers of a grateful old woman 
may be lieard by the Blessed Virgin, whose divine juty has 
succored my loneliness." 

“ But you have not been altogether lonely, I hope, made- 
moiselle. You have found sympathy and friendship even 
within these walls," said Florestan, gently leading up to 
the question which he wanted to ask. 


“ Ves, I have had friends here — friends who came and 
went. It has often seemed to me that this house is like a 
caravansary in an Arabian desert. My friends were so 
quickly gone, like travelers who stay only for a single 
night. Some have been very good to me. I would have 
loved them if I had dared. You want to ask me about a 
lodger in this house, Madame Manant told me. AVas the 
person here in the long past?" 

“ Twelve years ago. " 

“ Ah, that is not the past. The friends I remember best 
are those of fifty years ago. Who was the person you are 
curious about?" 

“A milliner's apprentice, called Toinette. I do not 
know her surname." 

“A milliner's apprentice," repeated the old woman, 
musingly. “ There have been many such in the attics. 
Bright girl-faces, sad girl-faces, have passed by my door 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


16 B 


throngli the long years, and have faded and vanished like 
iny own dreams. Toinette^ Toinette, Toinette/^ she re- 
peated, still musing. 

Florestaji waited patiently while the slow memories of 
old age wandered in the dim corridors of the past. Pres- 
ently the old woman took up her missal and began to look 
through the well-thumbed pages. Between the leaves there 
were many of those little pictures of Madonna, saints, and 
martyrs which Eomanists love, and every one of those lit- 
tle engravings, with their lace borders, was a souvenir of 
some vanished friend, and on every one of them there was 
some scrap of writing. 

She looked through them slowly and carefully, and at 
last came to a little picture of St. Stejihen, on the back of 
which was written: 

“ To Mademoiselle Lafont, from her loving Toinette. — 
St. StepheiPs-day, 1868.-’' 

“ There is the name, at least,’’ said the spinster. 
“ Toinette! Yes; I remember. She was a sweet girl, 
and I was very fond of her, and I think I helped her to 
escape a great danger. But she vanished like the rest of 
my friends. They were all shadows. There is only this 
lonely room and that bird-cage, with its changing occu- 
pants, that remain. 1 try to cheat myself with the fancy 
that the bird is always the same; but even he changes. 1 
put SLway my poor little dead canary, and buy myself a 
new one, and call him by the old name; but it is long be- 
fore he gets to know me as the dead one did. Ah, mon- 
sier, that is what makes life hard, that it should be so short 
for some and so long for others. ” 

“ Yes, mademoiselle, that is a misery we all feel. But 
it is some consolation to have lived a blameless life, as you 
liave. ” 

“ Limpets live blameless lives,” retorted Mile. Lafont, 
with a touch of scorn. “ There is no more merit in my 
blameless life than in a limpet’s. But you were asking 
about Toinette.” 

“ Yes. Please tell me all you can. Her surname in 
the first place.” 

“ Impossible. I have quite forgotten it.” 

“ What was the danger from which you helped to save 
her.^” 


164 


WHOSE WAS THE HAKD ? 


“ Her passionate love of a man who was her superior in 
station — an Englishman?'^ 

“ You do not think that any evil came out of that 
love?" 

It almost broke the girl's heart; no more evil than 
that. I believe the man meant honorably, though he 
trifled with a girl who adored him. He did not mean to 
betray her. He was touched by her romantic love for 
him. He gave her some half dozen jaunts to the villages 
near Paris; little fMes-a-tete water-parties, which are not 
always so harmless as in this case. He respected her inno- 
cence and her friendlessness; and she was able to respect 
herself. I was her only confidante, and I warned her of 
the peril which she ran when she gave her heart to a man 
who was very unlikely to marry her. She had not long 
come from the south, and she had only one relation in 
Paris, a brother, who did not often come near her." 

“ Ho you know how the brother earned his living?" 

“ He was an assistant in a chemist's shop." 

“ Did you ever see him?" 

“Two or three times. Toinette brought him into this 
room to show him off and to let him talk to me. She 
was proud of him, because he was^leverer than most young 
men in his station; but 1 don't think he was as kind to her 
as he might have been, seeing that she was a stranger and 
alone in this great city." 

“ Did he know of her love affair?" 

“ Eot at the beginning; but afterward at my advice she 
told him all about her Sunday jaunts with the English- 
man. He made a great fuss, and swore that the English- 
man should marry her; and although my poor Toinette 
entreated him not to interfere he evidently did so, for a 
few days after their conversation the girl received a letter 
from lier admirer, bidding her farewell, and inclosing an 
English bank-note for two thousand five hundred francs. 
She brought the letter to me in her despair. She was 
broken-hearted, poor child. She told- me she had never 
hoped to marry him. She only wanted to^be with him for 
a little while now and then, as she had been at Bougival 
or Asnieres — just to see him and to hear his voice; just to 
know that he cared for her, though she could never be 
more to him than his humble little friend. And now he 
bade her farewell forever! The letter was a kind letter, a 


WllOSli WAS TIJE HAND? 


165 


geutlernaii^s letter, written in very good French. I tried 
to make her understand that there was no other course for 
the Englishman to take, if he were an lionest man. If she 
could not be his wife she could be nothing to him. I told 
her that it was kind of him to send her a parting gift, 
which would be a dut for her when she should marry some 
honest youiig man in her own station.^’ 

“ Was she willing to accept his gift?’^ asked Florestan. 

“ ]Not she? The poor romantic child burst into a fresh 
hood of tears, and asked me if 1 could think her so base as 
to take a price for her broken heart. ‘ He has been very 
cruel to me,^ she said, ‘ and the cruelest act of all was to 
send me this money. I shall send it back to him.^ I 
begged her to think better of it, and to remember that if 
her health failed her, or work should be hard to get by and 
by, that there would be nothing between her and starva- 
tion. ‘ If there were not,’ she said, ‘ 1 would not eat the 
price of my love. I did not sell him that; I gave it to him 
freely, and would again, and again and again. I love him 
as I love God and His saints.’ ” 

“ Did she return the note?” 

“ It passed out of her hands, but whether it reached the 
giver is more than 1 can say. She had written her letter 
and inclosed the money in the envelope when her brother 
happened to visit her. His visits had been more frequent 
than usual since he found out her love story. He ques- 
tioned her about the letter, and she told him what she had 
done. He approved, and offered to deliver the letter, tell- 
ing her that there v/ould be a risk in sending so much 
money through the post. It had been delivered to her by 
hand, I may observe. My poor Toinette was simple 
enough to trust him; but whether the money ever reached 
its destination is doubtful. I never liked her brother’s 
countenance or manner, and 1 certainly would not have 
trusted him with any delicate commission.” 

“ Did you see much of him after that time, mademoi- 
selle?” 

“ No; he was too much taken up by politics or clubs to 
waste his time upon an old woman like me, or to*pay much 
attention to his sister. I saw more of her than ever, poor 
child, for she had no one now to take her into the country 
on a Sunday afternoon, and her Sundays were mostly spent 
in this room. She \^'as very good to me. She used to read 


ICC 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


to me, and cheer me with her company, though it was too 
plain that all the happiness had gone out of her own life. 
She lived in this house till the dark days of the Commune, 
and in all that time she had no new sweetheart, no friend 
except an old woman. She was a splendid worker — in- 
dustrious, economical, as good as gold. After the troubles 
began her brother took her away to London with him at 
an hour^s warning. He had been entangled with the Com- 
munists, and he was in no small risk of being sent to New 
Caledonia. From that time to this I have heard nothing 
of her or of him. I think if she had prospered and been 
happy Toinette would have written to me, so I fear that 
all has not gone well with her.'’' 

“If you could only remember that young man's name," 
said Florestan. 

“ His name — yes, I remember. His name was Claude 
— Claude Morel." 

Memory, which had failed Mile. Lafont, when she tried 
to recall the sister’s surname, recalled the name of the 
brother without an effort. 

“ I thank you most cordially, mademoiselle, for the 
amiability with which you have answered all my ques- 
tions," began Florestan, when the old woman interrupted 
him: 

“ Do not suppose it has been irksome to me to talk to 
you," she said, with her sly smile; “ my life is very lone- 
ly, and I have few intelligent people to talk to, and I dare 
say that you know that women like to talk, especially old 
women. You have let me talk about myself and my poor 
little history. It is always a pleasure to tell one's own 
history." 

“ If you have pleased yourself, dear mademoiselle, you 
have done me a service all the same, and I should like to 
present you with some little souvenir of our conversation. 
1 can not venture to offer you money." 

“ Pray do not," said the little old lady, drawing up her 
head with a certain hauteur which did not ill become her; 
“ I am very poor, and I live upon charity, but it is a kins- 
man’s charity. I have enough for my small wants, and I 
like to think myself a lady, though my father was a shoe- 
maker." 

“ Believe me, I know how to honor good birth and re- 
fined manners wherever I meet them," replied Florestan, 


WHOSE WAS THE HAHH ? 


107 


deferentially. “ 1 want, therefore, to offer you some lit- 
tle gift — something for this room in which you spend your 
days, for instance — which you may receive without the 
slightest derogation of dignity. 

“ Ah, monsieur, do not laugh at an old woman — more 
than old enough to be your grandmother. It seems a 
satire to talk of my dignity — in this one poor room — which 
serves me for bedroom, parlor, and kitchen.^’ 

“ Ah, but dignity does not depend on surroundings, ex- 
cept so far as they belong to character. The exquisite 
neatness of this room would alone tell me 1 was in the 
apartment of a lady.^^ 

He looked round the poor little room, so scantily fur- 
nished, so old and faded as to wood-work and wall-paper, 
yet with that look of airiness and perfect purity which some 
women know how to give to the poorest room. One thing 
only seemed to him out of harmony, and seeing that Mile. 
Lafont liked to talk to him and was quite ready to give 
him her confidence, he ventured to express his wonder at 
the style of art which she had chosen to adorn her walls. 

“ You wonder that 1 should surrcund myself with scenes 
of bloodshed,’’ she said, “ with the image of the guillotine 
which made my poor father an orphan in the morning of 
his life— with the picture of the fall of that fortress, with 
whose ancient towers there fell the old aristocracy of 
France, never to rise again with the old power, or the old 
influence on the fate of men. It is a strange taste, per- 
haps, but I like to look at the dreadful records of that 
revolution which robbed me of fortune and station before 
I was born, and which has given me so little except loud 
talk and empty promises in place of all it took away. I 
like to brood over the dull days that overshadowed Paris 
before this century and I were born. It is a morbid fancy, 
perhaps,, but it pleases me. The history of my country is 
written in blood, and I like to read that history.” 

“ Do the pictures never spoil your sleep, or mix them- 
selves with your dreams?” asked Florestan. 

“ Very seldom. I have this under my pillow, and I 
have her blessed image to reassure me.” She touched 
her rosary with her long lean fingers, and glanced to the 
wall beside her bed, where a plaster statuette of the Virgin 
Mother stood on a little Swiss bracket above a henitier, 

“ What shall 1 bring you to decorate your room, made- 


168 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


moiselle?’’ inquired Florestan, smiling at the little old lady, 
so serene in the simplicity of her faith. 

“Ah, monsieur, you tempt me to impose on your gen- 
erosity.^^ 

And then, almost reluctantly, the ancient spinster con- 
fessed that there was one thing for which she had been 
longing for the last thirty years, ever since she had begun 
to feel age creeping on with increasing sensitiveness to 
cold. She had longed for a duvet, a little eider-down 
quilt to put upon her bed. Every French woman of any 
substance had her duvet; but how was she, whose little 
pension just served for food and tire, to save money enough 
to buy herself a duvet. It was not possible. She had been 
trying for thirty years; but when by much hard pinching 
and scraping there were a few francs in the tire-lire, there 
came sickness, and the tire-lire had to be broken to pay 
for medicine and wine and soup. 

“ You shall have the duvet this evening. You shall 
sleep under it to-night,^^ cried Florestan, enchanted at 
being able to gratify a long-cherished wish of this patient 
creature. 

He thought of the lonely monotony of her life with in- 
expressible sadness. Could life in that gloomy old fortress 
which once stood not far off from this gloomy street have 
been very much more dismal than life in this one small 
room over the cobbler’s shop. Such a street! not one 
pleasing object, not one spot of brightness or color to be 
seen from the window, strain one's eyes and risk one’s 
neck as one might. Nothing but the shabby dull old 
houses over the way, and the gray and shabby dull old 
street right and left of the window. 

Florestan not only promised the eider-down duvet, but he 
promised also to go and see Mile. Lafont again, and then 
after gently touching the frail wasted haiid, he took up his 
hat and bowed himself out of the room. His first visit was 
to the Bon Marche, where he chose an eider-down quilt of 
the very best quality, covered with rose-colored silk. It 
was a relief to him to think that there would be one little 
bit of vivid color in that long gray street, though nobody 
would see it except the little old lady. 

“ When the warm weather begins" I will send her some 
pots of stocks and wall-flowers from the flower-market, and 
beg her to put them on her window-sill, as an act of Chris- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


169 


tiau charity/' he said to himself. “ It is too dreadful to 
think of people living in such a street, while within half 
an hour's walk there are the laughing gardens and the 
white villas, the gilded gates and glass porches, the bright- 
colored folly and frivolity of the Avenue de rimperatrice, 
or whatever these Republicans call the place. I only re- 
member the old names that 1 knew when I was a boy." 

The eider-down dispatched to the old lady, Florestan's 
next visit was to a man he had sometimes had occasion to 
employ while he was secretary of legation, a man who may 
be loosely described as a private detective. To this person 
he imparted his desire to find out the whereabouts and oc- 
cupation, surroundings, and character of a certain Claude 
Morel, employed before the Commune as a chemist's as- 
sistant — subsequent mode and manner of life unknown. 

“ I have reason to believe that he was concerned in some 
of the outrages of that period," said Florestan finally, 
“ and that when the army got into Paris, he found it 
prudent to get out with as little delay as possible." 

“ If he was active and influential at that time, I ought 
to be able to find out all about him," said M. Jaluc, “ for 
there has been a pretty sharp lookout kept upon those gen- 
tlemen — especially upon those who escaped a voyage over 
the seas. Give me a few days to make my inquiries, Mr. 
Florestan, and I will call on you with the result." 

This was all that Gilbert Florestan could do toward the 
fulfillment of his promise to Mrs. Arden. He wrote a long 
letter to her after his interview with Mile. Lafont, relating 
all that he had learned about Antoinette Morel. It was 
a relief to his mind to be able so to write, for when in- 
trusted with his commission he had feared that his inves- 
tigation of Robert Hatred's life in Paris might reveal an 
intrigue which it would not be well for the wife to know. 
Happily, in this memory of a past love, or perhaps only a 
passing fancy, all was innocent — a city idyl set in a 
young man's history, like a flower between the leaves of a 
book. 

Florestan went again to the somber old salon in the Rue 
St. Guillaume, where the three women lived in a luxurious 
seclusion. He was the only visitor on this occasion, 
although it was the evening which Mme. Quijada sat apart 
for her friends. It was obvious that her circle was of the 
smallest. 


170 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


The room was full of flowers — as before — costliest flow- 
ers. Masses of azaleas and white lilas lighted up the dark- 
paneled walls; a shallow vase, filled with gardenias, exhaled 
an almost oppressive perfume in the drowsy atmosphere; 
and Dolores wore a bunch of heavy yellow roses fastened 
amid the rich black lace of her bodice with a diamond pin. 
These things told of wealth from some source or other, and 
Florestan suspected that the source was not altogether holy. 

Louise Marcet received him with a gentle smile. Her 
plain black gown and complete absence of ornament con- 
trasted oddly with the subdued splendor of her aunt and 
cousin; but the melancholy expressed in her face was hardly 
more pronounced than Mile. Quijada’s listless weariness. 
And Florestan told himself that the young and lovely 
woman was not much happier than the faded spinster, 
whose age he was unable to guess. That iron-gray hair 
was evidently premature, and the deep lines in the face 
were those which sorrow plows in young faces, rather than 
the wrinkles of advancing years. 

Florestan found his society appreciated by Dolores, who 
brightened at his coming, and seemed to enjoy his con- 
versation. She talked very little herself, and she was evi- 
dently afraid of her mother, but she was not without intel- 
ligence. There was something in her look and manner 
which suggested the idea of an imprisoned spirit, a nature 
bound and trammeled, a bird caught in a net. 

M. and Mine. Duturque arrived soon after Florestan, 
and the professor entertained the small assembly with 
various reveries, suites, nocturnes, and gavottes of his own 
composition, which were so impressed with the stamp of 
the composer’s individuality that to Florestan’s untrained 
ear they sounded all alike. The utmost he could find to 
say about them was that they were strikingly original. 

It was a very quiet evening. Louise Marcet sat in her 
favorite corner, and only replied when she was spoken to. 
At ten o’clock Mme. Quijada invited her guests into an 
adjoining room, where tea and sorbets and delicate sand- 
wiches were served with some distinction. Florestan noted 
the massive silver and delicate porcelain, and formed his 
own conclusions. Conversation grew livelier with the 
stimulus of this light refreshment. The excellent Duturque 
devoured foie-gras sandwiches by the dozen, and drank 
many cups of straw-colored tea, while his worthy wife nib- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAHD? 


171 


bled sweet cakes and crunched chocolate creams, talking 
in a gentle strain all the time to Mme. Quijada about the 
delinquencies of her latest bonne a tout faire. This enter- 
tainment lasted nearly an hour, and the clock chimed 
eleven soon after the little party returned to the salon. 

Florestan approached his hostess to take leave, when the 
door opened suddenly and a man walked unannounced into 
the room, saluted Mme. Quijada with a careless nod as he 
passed her, and made straight for the piano, near which 
Dolores was seated talking to the professor. He leaned 
over Dolores and began to talk to her, without taking the 
faintest notice of any one else in the room. 

“You are late, Leon,^^ said Mme. Quijada; “ I had given 
you up for to-night. 

“I've no doubt you were able to amuse yourself without 
me," replied the late arrival, with a keen and even resent- 
ful glance at Florestan. “ May I ask to be introduced to 
your new friend?" 

“ Assuredly, if monsieur permits." Florestan bowed. 
“ Monsieur Leon Duverdier, Mr. Florestan." 

“ Madame Quijada's circle is so small that a stranger's 
presence always makes an impression," said Duverdier. 

Are you a resident in Paris, Mr. Florestan, or a visitor 
only? Your face seems familiar to me." 

“ Very likely, monsieur, since I am a resident, and an 
habitue in many places where Parisians are mostly to be 
found." 

Duverdier turned to Dolores, and Florestan was going to 
wish his hostess good-night, when his attention was at- 
tracted by Louise Marcet, who had risen from her seat and 
was standing near the door of the dining-room, paler than 
he had ever seen her before, and with her eyes fixed upon 
Duverdier with an expression of mingled horror and aver- 
sion. Without a word, and with that gaze unchanging to 
the last, she passed into the dining-room, shutting th^e door 
behind her. 

Duverdier noticed the maneuver with a nervous little 
laugh. 

“ Mademoiselle Marcet is no more sociable than usual," 
he said, lightly. “ Has she been suffering from one of her 
hysterical attacks?" 

Neither mother nor daughter answered his question, and 
he did not repeat it. Florestan changed his mind, and in- 


172 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


stead of bidding good-night seated herself in a chair near 
Mme. Quijada^s sofa, where he remained while the Du- 
turques took leave, a somewhat lengthy business, and while 
Dolores and the new-comer conversed in low voices, and 
with their heads very close together. 

‘‘ This is the man she loves,” thought Florestan; “ but 
I don’t think this is the man who finds the gilding for this 
lovely bird’s cage.” 

He had made up his mind to outstay the late arrival, if 
he could without bad manners, and amused himself by a 
profound consideration of the stranger’s appearance. 

It was a clear-cut face and a clever face, but the clever- 
ness was closely allied with craft, the good looks were 
marred by obvious indications of a premature decay, such 
decay as rarely comes from any other cause than a dissi- 
pated and wholly evil life. The lower part of the face was 
hidden by a thick black beard, but there were lines about 
the eyes which told a whole history to Gilbert Florestan. 
He had lived much among Frenchmen of all grades, and 
he knew what those wicked lines meant. 

“ I am sorry for Madame Quijada’s daughter,” he said 
to himself, and it was with a real sorrow that he saw the 
beautiful young head leaning so near the high, narrow fore- 
head, prematurely bald and deeply lined — the fresh and 
pure cheek of girlhood almost touching the cheek of wasted 
manhood, with its livid, bloodless hue and sunken outline. 

“ Women are like barnacles,” he said; “ they are always 
ready to fasten upon a wreck. ” 

The time-piece chimed midnight. He could not decent- 
ly protract his visit, having arrived at nine o’clock. Duver- 
(lier had a better excuse for lingering, and he evidently 
meant to stay. 

Mme. Quijada begged him to repeat his visit. Dolores 
hardly looked up in answer to his parting salutation. Her 
whole being seemed absorbed in Duverdier’s half- whispered 
utterances. 

“ Where did you pick up your new friend?” asked Du- 
verdier, directly the door closed upon Florestan. “ At that 
general miscellany of curiosities, the Duturque salon, I sup- 
pose,” he went on, answering his own question. “ Yet he 
looks a trifle too aristocratic to have come out of the 
Duturque collection.” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAHD ? 


173 


“ We met him at Madame Duturque’s, all the same/^ 
Mme. Qiiijada replied, coldly. 

“ Keally! And may I ask your motive for making him 
free of this salon 

“He is a gentleman, and he seemed interested in us. 
In our lonely lives it is pleasant to make an agreeable ac- 
quaintance whose society can not compromise us.^^ 

“ Do you think Perez would approve of such an ac- 
quaintance?^^ 

“ Perez is in Spain. 

“ Yes, but he is not going to stay there forever; and 
when he comes back to Paris, and finds your English ac- 
quaintance domesticated here, I doubt if he will be over- 
pleased. ” 

“ He will not make any objection to an occasional visit 
from Mr. Florestan. Indeed, there is only one person to 
v/hom he seriously objects.’^ 

“ Namely, your humble servant. I accept the prejudice 
as a compliment. And now, best of women, to business. 
I have been making a proposition to Dolores, but she is not 
an arithmetician, and 1 can not inspire her with a proper 
appreciation of the difference between capital well invested 
and capital lying idle at a banker’s. 

“Don’t trouble yourself to say another word,” ex- 
claimed Mme. Quijada. “ I know exactly what is coming. 
You have got into some new difficulty on the Bourse, and 
you want us to help you out of it — as we have done before, 
to our everlasting loss.” 

“ I am not in a difficulty; but I have the chance of mak- 
ing a great coup; and you may share my luck, if you 
like.” 

“ Thanks for the privilege. We are not gamblers.” 

“ This is a certainty. The Valley of Dolce Aqua Min- 
eral Works — a valley west of Santa Rosa, in the Sonoma 
County, a valley which is one silver mine. For centuries 
the wealth has lain there, unknown, undreamed of. It is 
known now only to a chosen few. The whole valley has 
been bought for a song. Shares in the property are now 
to be had at par. Once the truth gets known they will go 
up five hundred per cent. You know what silver has done 
for Mackay. In the Dolce Aqua Valley there is the mak- 
ing of twenty Mackays. Will you go in for a share in a 
big pile while you’ve the chance?” 


174 


WHOSE WAS THE HA HD ? 


“ answered Mme. Quijada, with uncompromising 
firmness. 

“ That is a monosyllabic answer. 

“ At any rate it is one you can’t misunderstand. 1 think 
it was copper last time, was it not? And the time before 
it was lead, and before that quicksilver. What will it be 
the next time, I wonder? Perhaps brass.” 

“My dear aunt, you are unscientific; brass does" not 
grow in mines.” 

“ No? Only on the foreheads of men, 1 suppose.” 

There was a long silence, during which Duverdier paced 
the room with a troubled air. 

He was decidedly handsome, and he had a certain style 
which is attractive among a certain class, though it is the 
very opposite of good style. He was in evening dress, but 
there was a carelessness about his costume, and an odor of 
tobacco, which hinted that his evening had not been spent 
in very exacting society. 

“ Well,” he said at last, looking first at Dolores and 
then at her mother. “ If you will not go in with me, and 
pull off a fortune, perhaps you will help me by a loan. I 
have pledged myself to take a hundred shares, and have 
paid a deposit of twenty per cent. , which will be forfeited if 
I don’t take them up, to say nothing of the discredit. Will 
you lend me eight hundred pounds for three months?” 

“ My dear Leon, you talk as if we were Eothschilds, my 
poor girl and 1.” 

“ I talk with a perfect knowledge of who and what you 
are,” replied Duverdier, in a cold, hard voice, and with a 
cruel emphasis upon every word. “I talk with the knowl- 
edge that Dolores has but to lift up her finger in order to 
get any money she wants out of that old money-bag, Perez, 
whom you and she only tolerate because he is a money- 
bag. She has only to say to him, ‘ I have a caprice which 
will cost me a thousand pounds ’ — a gown, a horse, an 
orchid, what you will — for the check to be written and the 
cash at her disposal, to fling out of window if she likes.” 

“ What if he were to guess that the caprice was another 
name for a lover’s necessity?” asked Mme. Quijada. 

“ He will not guess. He is blind and helpless where 
Dolores is concerned.” 

“ Well, he is not going to be fooled this time. 1 forbid 
my daughter to lend you another louis. You have bled us 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


175 


enough already — enough for a life-time. You belong to an 
insatiable race — the race of gamblers. Eace-course, Monte 
Carlo, or Bourse, it is all the same thing. Call the vice 
by what name you like, it means ruin.'’’ 

“ And yet if it had not been for one venture of mine you 
would never have been able to make a new start in life at 
Madrid as a woman of good family,” said Duverdier, white 
with anger. “ You owe me everything, and yet refuse to 
help me in my need!” 

You had better forget that old debt, for fear I should 
remember it too often,” said the elder woman. 

There was something in her tone, something in her look, 
that silenced him for a time, and when he spoke next all 
the insolence was gone from his speech. 

“For pity’s sake help me with a few hundreds,” he said. 
“ If you refuse 1 am a lost man; and 1 know you have 
something in an old stocking — more thousands than I am 
asking hundreds. You are too clever a woman not to pro- 
vide for the hazards of the future.” 

“If I have provided you can’t suppose I shall destroy 
that provision in order to save you from a peril which 
would be renewed in less than six months. If things are 
desperate in Paris you had better get out of Paris while 
you can, and try your fortunes somewhere else. I never 
thought this a good place of residence for you.” 

“ You have made up your mind?” he asked, with sud- 
den fierceness. 

“ Irrevocably. ” 

“ So be it. Good-night, Dolores.” 

He took her in his arms before she could resist him, 
kissed her passionately, and walked to the door. 

“ What are you going to do?” 

“ You will know all about that to-morrow,” he an- 
swered, and banged the door behind him to give emphasis 
to his words. 

Dolores would have rushed out of the room in pursuit of 
him, but her mother stopped her on the threshold. 

“ He means to kill himself!” cried the girl, wildly. 

“Not he, child! Of a thousand men who make that 
kind of threat only one ever realizes it. He belongs to the 
nine hundred and ninety-nine.” 


176 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


CHAPTER XIV. 
daisy’s diary at lam ford. 

Home is sweet even after Italy, even after the bright and 
busy streets of Paris, with their flower shops, and milliners, 
and bonbons, and prettinesses of all kinds, and the Bois, 
and the carriages, and the smart pec pie, and the music, 
and the life and brightness everywhere, and above all the 
opera and the theaters. Paris was very nice. I had no 
idea 1 could enjoy any city so much after Venice. I thought 
that enchanting labyrinth of marble, lying upon the breast 
of the waves, would take the color out of every other city 
in the world. But Paris was nice, all the same, and 1 was 
sorry to leave it. Home is sweet always. I have been 
reading my German Plato this morning under the willows 
that shade my father’s grave, in the old spot that has been 
my sanctuary ever since 1 began to read serious books, and 
to try to understand the thoughts of great writers. Plato is 
so comforting after Schopenhauer and Hartmann. Plato 
is full of hope, they are the preachers of despair. 

Mother seems happy to be at home again, in the old 
rooms, among the books and pictures, and in the gardens 
she loves so dearly. She has imported a small fortune in 
the shape of specimen conifers and azaleas and peonies and 
roses from a famous nurseryman near Paris, and she is 
happily employed in superintending the planting of her 
treasures. It is rather late for planting, our head-gardener 
says in his broad Scotch; and he even went so far as to 
give us a saying quoted by the great Sir Walter himself. 
“ Plaunt a tree before Candlemass and ye may comrnaund 
it to grow, plaunt one after Candlemass and ye may joost 
beg it to grow.” But, in spite of Sir Walter’s proverb, we 
must trust in Providence and in our good old MacDonald’s 
skill. 

Uncle Ambrose retains the cottage in which he has lived 
so long, and in which Cyril’s childhood was spent. Thert 
is no room in our house for his books, which fill every avail- 
able wall in the cottage, so he keeps them on their old 
shelves, and uses his old study sometimes when he is work- 
ing on aiiy subject which requires much reference to 
authorities. He is writing a new book, I believe, though 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


177 


he has not confessed as much to either mother or me. He 
is very reticent about his literary work, and seemed sur« 
prised and almost scared by the success of his last book, 
and by the tremendous amount of criticism and argumenta- 
tion that was expended upon it. 

“ I could not live without literary work,^^ he told me 
once; “ but I do not derive very much pleasure from the 
publication of a book. Critics are an aggravating race. 
They see meanings that I never meant; they overlook the 
most obvious points. 

He is the most self-contained man this world ever saw, 
I believe. He takes no delight in the things that please 
other people, but he is the best and kindest friend 1 have, 
and he adores mother; so what can I want more in him to 
make up perfection? Cyril is his opposite in most things 
— all energy, action, light-heartedness. 1 sometimes wish 
he were a little less light-hearted. One may weary of per- 
petual sunshine. If I am ever in a sad or meditative mood 
1 have a feeling that, however kind Cyril is, he can’t 
understand me. He seems miles and miles away from me 
— as far as from England to America. 

He has been away at Oxford since we came home, visit- 
ing some of his college friends. Of course I miss him 
sadly, but there is a kind of relief in being alone after con- 
tinual companionship. Had Cyril been here I should not 
have been able to spend a morning by my father’s grave. 
He would have wanted me to go for a ride, or a walk, or 
to row down to Henley. I fall back into my old ways and 
my sad, quiet life naturally while he is away, and if it 
were not that we write to each other every day I might 
almost forget that we are engaged. 

Uncle Ambrose is not fond of River Lawn. He does 
not say as much, but 1 know him too well not to find out 
his real feelings. Children have a way of watching faces; 
and I used to watch his face years ago to see when he was 
pleased or displeased with me, so that I came to know every 
line in his countenance and what every line means. 

No; he is not fond of River Lawn. All the things I 
love — the quaint old cottage rooms that father and 
mother found here before they were married, the low ceil- 
ings, the bay-windows, the great oak beams and diamond 
panes, and leaden lattices — have no charm for Uncle Am- 
brose. Nor yet the handsome rooms father built, so studi- 


178 WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 

ously arranged for mother^s comfort; drawing-room and 
dining-room below, bedroom, dressing-room, and boudoir 
above. Nothing could be more picturesque than the old 
rooms, or more comfortable and luxurious than the new, 
and yet Uncle Ambrose does not like the house. I can see 
it in his face. He seems to bear a grudge toward the place 
father loved and cared about. Is it jealousy, 1 wonder.^ 
Surely a philosopher, a man who has studied the deeper 
meanings and mysteries of life, present and future, as Plato 
studied them, surely such a man could not feel so petty 
and limited a feeling as jealousy, jealousy of my dear dead 
father^s love and forethought for my mother; a jealousy 
so trivial as to set him against the rooms and furniture my 
father provided for his wife. 

No; 1 can not believe him capable of such a childish 
pettiness. He is a man of large mind and far-reaching 
thoughts, and to be jealous about chairs and tables — im- 
possible! 

But the fact still remains. Uncle Ambrose does not like 
River Lawn. He is full of his plans for the house in 
Grosvenor Square; has been up to London with my mother 
twice already, to hurry on the work. He wants to install 
us there at the beginning of June, so that we may enjoy 
all the gayeties of the season, the summer season when 
people almost live out-of-doors. Mother is to be presented 
on her marriage, and I am to be presented by mother. 
She has begun to talk already of my court gown, all white, 
like a bride^s. Cyril suggested that it would be aii econo- 
my for us to marry while the gown is fresh; but I told him 
that the idea of matrimony in relation to him had not yet 
entered my head. 

“It has entered other people’s heads though, my dear 
Lady Disdain,” said he. “I suppose you know that a 
certain suite of rooms in Grosvenor Square is being fitted 
with a view to our joint occupation.” 

“With a view means any time within the next ten 
years,” I told him. 

Upon this he began to be disagreeably persistent, and 
declared that nobody had ever contemplated a long engage- 
ment. We had plenty of money, and what was there to 
prevent our being married before the summer was over? 

“ A great many things,” said 1. “ But first and chief 


WHOSE WAS THE HAKE? 170 

among them the fact that we are both much too feather- 
headed to take such an awful step as matrimony. 

And then 1 reminded him how nice it was to be engaged, 
how much nicer for young people like us than to be mar- 
ried and tied to each other in a sort of domestic bondage. 

“ Marriage is a capital institution for middle-aged and 
elderly people, said I. “ The very best and brightest 
examples we have of married people are Baucis and Phile- 
mon, and Darby and Joan. Now you would not expect 
me to feel like Baucis.'’^ 

“ Baucis was young once,’^ said he. 

“ Yes, and then no doubt she was engaged to Philemon, 
and he used to serenade her as you did me that night at 
Venice. Oh, it was lovely! You couldnT have serenaded 
your wife. You would have been in-doors grumbling at her 
more likely.^’ 

“ Daisy, you are talking nonsense,'^ said he, sternly, and 
no doubt he spoke the truth. 

“ Oh, I am only pleading for youth and liberty — for the 
morning hours of life,’^ I explained. ‘‘As it is you can 
go where you like, do what you like, and there is no one to 
find fault with you. If 1 were your wife I might feel 
offended at your going up to London so often and coming 
home so late at night, and being a member of so many 
clubs. If I were your wife I might grumble at your ac- 
cepting that invitation to Oxford for next week.'’^ 

“ Tell me to withdraw my acceptance, and it is done,” 
he cried, in his impulsive way. “ I will give you all the 
authority of a wife in advance. Being your slave, what 
can I do but wait — 

“ DonT quote that sonnet,” I said, “ everybody does. 
Quote something fresh. ” 

He did not notice this impertinence. He was pacing up 
and down the room in a state of excitement. 

“ Your mother did not think like you, Daisy,” he saiid. 
“ She was only nineteen when she married.” 

“ Ah, but then she adored my father,” said 1, without 
thinking what 1 was saying. 

He stopped his impetuous pacing, and walked over to 
me, laid his hands upon my shoulders, and looked me in 
the face. 

“ Margaret Hatrell,” he said, “ do you mean what your 
words imply?” 


180 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“Do I mean that my mother was desperately in love 
with my father? Of course I do/ ^ 

“ And that you are not in love with me?’^ 

“ Not desperately in love. Oh, Cyril, don’t look at me 
like that. You have no right to look so angry; you have 
no right to look so shocked and distressed. Did 1 ever tell 
you that I adored you? Never, never, never! 1 am not 
romantic or poetical as my mother was at my age. 1 have 
been taught differently. Your father trained my mind, 
and he did not make me romantic. It isn’t in my nature 
to love any one as my mother loved my father — at least, I 
think not.” 

A strange faltering stopped me as I said this; a curious 
dim feeling that there were hidden possibilities in my heart; 
dreams that I might have dreamed; feelings that would 
have brought my mind nearer akin to my mother’s mind 
if things had been different. 

The look of absolute distress in his face made me un- 
happy, and I tried to make amends for my silly speech. 

“ Why should you be shocked because I am not roman- 
tic?” 1 asked. “ 1 don’t think you are a very romantic 
person, either. We have known each other all our lives, 
and we ought to be very happy together by and by. Is 
that not enough, Cyril?” 

“Not quite,” he answered, graver than I had ever seen 
him until that moment; “but I suppose it is all I shall 
get, so I must be satisfied. ” 

^ 

Y^esterday afternoon I amused myself with an explora- 
tion. It was a lovely afternoon, almost summer-like, 
although we are still in the time of hyacinths, and the 
beeches have not yet unfolded their tender young leaves. 
Mother had gone to London with her husband to look at 
the drawing-rooms, which are receiving their finishing 
touches at the hands of the decorators, and I had all the 
day to myself. I spent the whole morning at my studies, 
working upon a synopsis of Duruy’s history of the Creeks, 
which Uncle Ambrose advised me to write, firstly, to im- 
press historical facts upon my mind; secondly, to cultivate 
style, and thirdly, to acquire the power of arranging and 
condensing a subject with neatness and facility. It is 
rather dry work, but I like it, and I adore the Greeks. I 
have been reading Ebers’ Egyptian story between whiles. 


WHOSt) WAS THE HAND? 


181 


and I think that has helped me to realize the atmosphere 
of that by-gone age when Pisistratus was ruling at Athens, 
and Oroesiis was discoursing wisely upon his fallen fortunes 
at the court of Amasis. 

I finished my work before lunch, which is an absurd 
meal when mother is away. A mere scramble with the 
dogs, who come in to keep me company, and clear my 
plate under my nose. Directly after lunch I took up my 
hat to go out, whereupon Sappho and Ponto, my darling 
Irish setters, went mad, and nearly knocked me down in 
their delight at the idea of a ramble with me. 

We had explored every lane, copse, and common within 
four miles of Eiver Lawn, so I wanted, if I possibly could, 
to give the dogs a change, and thought I would venture to 
peep in at Fountainhead, where the shrubberies are full 
of primroses at this season. 

The Fountainhead gardener and our under-gardener are 
great friends, and 1 have often talked to him when he has 
been in our grounds. 1 know the old housekeeper, too, so 
I had no compunction in opening a little gate in the shrub- 
bery which gives on to the narrow lane that divides our 
property from Mr. Florestan’s. There is a grand entrance 
on the Henley Road, and high iron gates, and a rustic lodge 
with a thatched roof and the dearest old chimney stack. 
The gardener^s family live in this lodge, but the big gate 
is only opened when Mr. Florestau is at home, and that is 
very seldom. He told me that he meant to be oftener at 
Fountainhead in the future. He feels himself growing 
too old for a roving life. I suppose he must be at least 
nine-and-twenty, which is certainly old compared with 
Cyril and me. 

How nice it is to be young — to feel one^s self quite young, 
and how sad it must be when weariness and age begin to 
creep over one. 1 am miserable sometimes when I thiiik 
that mother will grow old before I do — that I shall see the 
shadows stealing over that dear and lovely face — the 
shadows that foretell the end. Oh, that is the bane of 
life, that is what makes life not worth living — the knowl- 
edge that death is waiting somewhere on the road we know 
not — the gray mysterious highway of the future — waiting 
for those we love. 

5i« * » 

The old shrubberies looked lovely in the afternoon sun, 


182 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


such a wild wealth of arbutus and rhododendron and Portu- 
gal laurel, and so many fine conifers half buried among the 
spreading branches, a tangle of loveliness, periwinkle and 
St. John's wort straggling over every bit of unoccupied 
ground. Pon to and Sappho rushed about like mad things, 
imagining all sorts of possible vermin, and scratching and 
digging whenever they got out of reach of my whip. That 
dog-whip of mine looks formidable, but I'm afraid those 
two clever darlings know that 1 would not hurt them for 
worlds. 

I had ray pocket Dante with me, meaning to try and 
fancy myself in the Pine Forest, near Kavenna, where he 
used to meditate, but the book was so far true to its name 
that it never left my pocket. I seemed to have so much 
to think about; and a spring afternoon, with light cloudlets 
floating in a pale-blue sky, and the perfume of violets in 
the air sets all one's most fanciful fancies roaming far and 
wide. I think my thoughts were light as thistledown or 
vanity that afternoon, or they could never have strayed so 
far, and yet there was a touch of sadness in them, for 1 
could not help of thinking of Gilbert Florestan and his sad 
position, quite alone in the world, mother and father both 
lying still and dumb, as my dear father lies in his grave 
under the willows — tio sister or brother, no one to care for 
him or to lean on him. 

No doubt he has cousins, as 1 have. I have not quite 
made up my mind whether cousins are a necessary evil or 
a modified kind of blessing. I'm afraid, if I stood alone 
in the world as he does, Dora and Flora would not fill a 
large gan in my life. 

I ramtled in the shrubberies and the dear old-fashioned 
gardens till I was tired, and then I began to feel the keen- 
est curiosity about the inside of the house. 

It was not a pretty house, but it was old and dignified. 
When one has come but lately from a city of palaces one 
can hardly be altogether alive to the beauty of an old En- 
glish mansion, with moss-grown walls and deep-set win- 
dows, and a general grayness and a low tone of color which 
some people find so dispiriting. Yet the house touched me 
by a kind of mournful beauty, and a sense of quiet desola- 
tion such as I felt only a few weeks ago when I looked at those 
old neglected mansions upon some of the smaller canals, so 
gloomy in their grandeur, as of the dead irrevocable past. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


183 


I have felfc sometimes as if I would give worlds to be able 
to buy one of those degraded, dilapitated old palaces, and 
to clear away all its parasite growth of petty modern uses, 
and to restore it to the splendor and the beauty of three 
hundred years ago. And yet 1 have shuddered at the 
thought of the phantoms that might come crowding round 
me in those great grand rooms, of all the dead people who 
might awake at the sound of music and laughter in the 
home where they were once merry. 

I walked up and down the broad gravel terrace in front 
of Mr. Florestan’s house. It stands only about twenty feet 
above the level of the river bank, and a wide lawn slopes 
gently from the house to the river. I could see the boats 
going by, and hear the voices of the rowers, which were a 
relief after the uncanny feeling that had crept over me 
while I was in the great overgrown garden on the other side 
of the house. I believe the gardener must have given him- 
self a holiday, for not a human creature did 1 see in the 
grounds. 

There is a glass door opening on to the terrace, with an 
old-fashioned hanging bell. 1 ventured to ring that anti- 
quated bell, trembling a little at the thought of ghosts, and 
perhaps a little at the thought that the old housekeeper would 
wonder at my wanting to explore her domain. The fancy 
had never come into my foolish brain before to-day, but I 
suppose that was because 1 had seen so little of Mr. Flores- 
tan until we met in Paris, and could not feel any particu- 
lar interest in his house. Now that I know him, the house 
seems like an old friend, and I wonder that I can have 
looked so often at the old Indian-red roof and the great 
gray-stone chimney-stacks without wanting to see what the 
inside is like. 

No one answered my summons, though I heard the bell 
ringing with an awful distinctness. I rang again, but still 
there was no answer, though I waited long enough for the 
feeblest of old women to creep from the remotest corner of 
tfie rambling old house. I rang a third time, and still 
there was no reply, and the more I couldnT get in the more 
keenly curious I became. So at last, knowing old Mrs. 
Murdew would never resent any liberty on the part of my 
mother’s daughter, mother being a power at Lamford, I 
tried the door. 

It opened easily, and I went in, taking care to shut the 


184 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


door after me, so as to keep Pouto and Sappho outside. 
They were scampering about the shrubberies, and I knew 
they would find their way home when they missed me. I 
went in, feeling very much as Fatima must have felt, or, 
in other words, just a little ashamed of my idle curiosity. 

The house is a dear old house, very shabby as to carpets 
and curtains, but with lovely old furniture of Sir Charles 
Graudison^s period, and with old china in every corner, 
china which I am convinced is worth a fortune; but I will 
never breathe a word about its value to Mr. Florestan or he 
may pack it all off to Christie’s. Men are such Goths 
where old china is concerned. 

Yes, it is a dear old house. It has an old, old, perfume 
of rose leaves and lavender, which must have been hoarded 
ever so long before Mr. Florestan was born, in all the old 
chrysanthemum bowls and hawthorn jars which stand about 
everywhere on the tops of cabinets and in corner cupboards, 
and in quaint little alcoves and recesses which one meets 
with unawares in the corridors and lobbies. Not all the 
wealth of the Indies could create such a house. It is the 
slow growth of time, like the golden-brown lichens and 
cool gray mosses oii the garden walls. 

1 roamed and roamed about the rooms on the ground 
floor, opening one into another, quaintly inconvenient, 
with queer little doors, half wainscot and half wall-paper; 
rooms without the faintest pretension to splendor or dig- 
nity, rooms that suggest the world as Miss Edgeworth and 
Miss Austen knew it, a world in which people dined at five 
o’clock, and danced country dances, and played on the 
spinet, and painted on velvet, and talked about the 
luncheon-tray and the britzska. 

I looked at all the ornaments on the tables and chimney- 
pieces, the things our grandmothers loved; cardboard hand- 
screens, with pencil landscapes — Craigmiller Castle, Guy 
Clift — spill-boxes. What are spills, by the way? Old 
albums and scrap-books, oki work-baskets lined with faded 
satin. Everything was arranged as neatly as it had been 
fifty years ago, when Mr. Florestan’s grandmother was 
mistress of the house, and these were her things, most of 
them. His mother’s room had a more modern look, yet 
even there, the books, desk, and work-boxes were old-fash- 
ioned. How quickly the fashion of this life passes away. 

At first I was too much interested and amused to feel the 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


185 


uncanny influences of those empty rooms full of things 
that had belonged to people who are all dead; but pres- 
ently the air of long ago, together with the death-like 
silence of the house, began to attect my spirits. A feeling 
oE profound melancholy crept over me. I thought of my 
dear dead father, and wondered, as 1 have so often won- 
dered, where the dead are, how near us, or how distant. 1 
went back to the dining-room for a last look at the family 
portraits before leaving the desolate house. Mrs. Murdew 
had evidently gone out upon some errand, and there was 
no use in waiting for her return. 

I looked with interest at the picture on the left of the 
sideboard, and near the door leading into the hall. It was 
the portrait of Mr. Florestan^s father, a full-length paint- 
ing, in a rough brown shooting suit, knickerbockers, and 
mighty hobnailed boots. A picturesque brown hat, a gun, 
and a liver-colored pointer were the accessories of the boldly 
painted figure, against a background of russet foliage. 
The picture which was by a master-hand, might have been 
called a study in brown. 

The likeness between father and son was remarkable. 
It might have been Gilbert Florestan’s portrait that I was 
looking at. I studied the picture so long — fascinated by 
that wonderful slapdash power, the kind of painting 
which Euskin describes as a rapid hand and a full brush — 
that the face seemed to grow into my mind, and the figure 
almost took life and motion as 1 looked at it. My nerves 
were in a peculiar state after that hour of silence and 
thoughtfulness in the desolate house, or else 1 could hardly 
have been so foolish as I was two minutes afterward, when 
1 turned to leave the dining-room, and shrieked with terror 
on seeing a figure on the threshold of the door in the shadow 
of the half-closed shutters. 

I was idiot enough to mistake reality for apparition. In 
that moment of terror I believed that the figure standing 
there looking at me with a quiet smile was the ghostly 
semblance of the dead man whose picture I had contem- 
plated so long. 

“ Pray, forgive me, for startling you,^^ said Mr. Flores- 
tan, offering me his hand in the easiest way, and not allow- 
ing me to see that he thought me an idiot, as he must have 
done; “ I ought to have given you some notice of my 


186 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


arrival. You were so absorbed in my father’s picture that 
you did not hear his son’s footsteps.” 

“I think it is the fault of that thick Turkey carpet 
rather than of my abstraction,” 1 told him, “ but I was 
really absorbed in the picture, and envying the painter his 
power to get such a grand effect out of such simple ele- 
ments. It is almost as good as Gainsborough’s blue boy. 
I had no idea you were coming to England so soon.” 

“ I had no idea myself; but the distance from Paris to 
Lamford is such a bagatelle that I thought I might as well 
run across and have a look at the old home before all the 
tulips had withered. My mother used to be so fond of her 
tulips, though they were never a costly collection. A 
Dutch connoisseur would have laughed at our poor little 
show.” 

“ Have you only just arrived?” I asked, feeling that 1 
was redder than the great overblown peonies that I had 
seen in the shrubbery, and wondering what he must think 
of my extraordinary intrusion. 

“ Within three minutes. The fly is still at the door, and 
my servant is bringing in my portmanteau.” 

“ You must think it so strange to find me here,” I stam- 
mered, feeling even worse than Fatima, though there were 
no gory heads lying about. “ 1 only think it delightful to 
be welcomed by the presence of a friend,” he answered, 
with inexpressible kindness. 

There was something in his smile aiid in his tone of 
voice so full of protecting friendliness that I began to feel 
easier in my mind, and was able to explain my appearance 
in his dining-room on that particular afternoon, and then 
I told him that 1 must go and hunt for the dogs, who 
might be doing all manner of mischief in his shrubbery. 

I had a secret conviction that Sappho and Ponto had 
gone peaceably home to the stables, but the dogs made a 
decent excuse to get me out of the house. 

“ I feel sure they won’t do the slightest harm,” he said, 
“but if you are the least little bit uneasy on that score 
we’ll go and look for them together, and then perhaps your 
mother will take pity upon a tired traveler and give me a 
cup of tea.” 

“ 1 am so dreadfully sorry,” I said, “ mother is in Lon- 
don, and won’t be home much before eight.” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 187 

“ That^s a sad disappointment. I had looked forward 
to seeing her this afternoon.'’^ 

We went out at the hall door together, and we explored 
the shrubberies and garden, but saw no sign of the dogs. 
He went home with me, and we found Sappho and Ponto 
in their kennels, whither they had returned half an hour 
before. Then from the stable yard we wandered naturally 
to the garden, where the basket-chairs and tables had been 
set out in the usual place on the terrace, in honor of the 
lovely afternoon. The footman came out with the tea-tray, 
and arranged it while we, Mr. Florestan and I, were stand- 
ing looking at the river. 

Servants are so officious. I bad happened to say at 
luncheon that if the day continued fine I thought I would 
have tea in the garden, and here was thf3 man setting out the 
cups and saucers under Mr. FlorestaiPs nose. 

There was no help for it. I could not be so inhospitable 
as to send him away tealess, with my pet brass kettle sing- 
ing merrily over the spirit lamp, and my favorite buns 
frizzling fresh from the oven. 1 made the best of my 
awkward position. 

“ Perhaps, as mother isnH here, you'll allow me to give 
you a cup of tea,’^ I said. He accepted eagerly. I 
almost hoped he’d take it standing, and go away directly 
he had emptied the cup. But, although he had been the 
soul of delicacy and consideration in his own house, he 
seemed to think he might do as he liked in ours. He 
seated himself in one of the low basket-chairs, and I felt 
that he meant to stay. 

I dare say he thought it the most natural thing in the 
world, but I could not help feeling the strangeness of it, 
though Cyril and I have had tea on the terrace tete-a-tete 
many a time before we were engaged, and Mr. Florestan is 
a good deal older than Cyril. So I tried not to look con- 
fused or silly as I poured out the tea. 

“ Please let me wait upon you,” 1 said, when I saw him 
struggling out of the chair, the seat of which is only about 
a foot from the ground. “ 1 know how tired you must be. 
Let me wait upon you just as if you were mother.” 

“ The offer is too tempting. 1 own to feeling tired. 1 
left Paris at eight o’clock, and that meant leaving my 
lodgings at seven. And the day was hot and dry and 
dusty. However, this garden and the river make amends 


188 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


for all 1 have suffered, and this toasted bun is better than 
the most famous of Bignon’s sautes. Why do we waste 
our substance on Paris dinners when tea and cake in a sun- 
lit terrace are so delicious/^ 

“ We can not always have the terrace and the sunshine/’ 

“ Oh, but there is the winter fireside,” said he. “ Every 
one has a fireside. I am assured that epicurean dining is a 
mistake. A man left to his own devices usually dines on a 
mutton chop. Gourmandism is mere swagger and rivalry. 
A Lord Alvanley invents a dish which shall be costlier than 
anybody else’s dish. A fricassee composed of that particu- 
lar morsel out of a fowl’s back which epicures have chris- 
tened the oyster. A hetacomb of chickens have to be 
sacrificed for a single fricassee, and Lord Alvanley goes 
down to posterity as the inventor of the costliest dish that 
was ever cooked since Vitellius and his nightingales’ 
tongues. Almost all our dining in Paris is upon the same 
principle. We vie with each other in wastefulness, and 
restaurateurs grow rich.” 

It was a pleasure to hear him rattle on as he took his 
tea, devouring buns and jam sandwiches, and seeming 
really to enjoy the meal. 1 was very soon as much at 
home with him as if he had been Cyril. 

I told him about the house in Grosvenor Square, and we 
had a long discussion upon coloring and high art in furni- 
ture. I find that he inclines to the Italian school, and 
thinks that orientalism is a mistake in London. 

“ Your Persian lattices and Moorish divans imply per- 
petual sunshine and a lazy semi-tropical climate,” he said. 
“ They are mere foolishness in such a country as England. 
And so you are going to desert Kiver Lawn m all its sum- 
mer beauty for the starched stateliness of Grosvenor 
Square.” 

I told him the choice was not my step or my mother’s, 
but that it was my step-father who was shifting the scene 
of our lives. And then I was drawn on to tell him of my 
step-father’s dislike of the house which had been my 
father’s home. 

“ I suppose it is a natural thing on his part,” 1 said; 
“ he loves my mother so intensely that he can not bear to 
see her in the home, which her first husband made for her.” 

“ Yes, no doubt, such a jealousy is natural to some tem- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


189 


peraments. Your step-father is a peculiar man, a man of 
deep feeling, I fancy. 

“ Yes, that is quite true. He was devoted to my mother 
for years — all the years of her widowhood — before he took 
courage to ask her to be his wife. He is the most unselfish 
of men. He hardly made any use of his fortune until his 
marriage; but since he has been mother's husband he has 
spent his money like a prince." 

“ And you arc to be his son's wife," he said; “ that will 
strengthen the bond between your mother and him." 

His voice and manner changed curiously as he said this. 
No one could have been gayer than he was five minutes be- 
fore, when he was expatiating upon the merits of jam 
sandwiches. No one could be graver than he was now. 

I did not answer him. What could I say? My engage- 
ment is an accepted fact. 

We were both silent, till I felt somebody would have to 
say something, so I said, rather stupidly, “ Cyril and 1 
have known each other since we were children. We are 
almost like brother and sister. " 

“Almost — with the difference of a wedding-ring," he 
answered, as he rose to say good-bye. 

When he was gone 1 found he had stayed only twenty 
minutes, and 1 had two hours to dispose of before eight 
o’clock. 

He came to see mother this afternoon, and they walked 
together on the terrace in earnest conversation for more 
than an hour. Uncle Ambrose was over at the cottage, 
buried among his books. I was in the drawing-room, and 
1 couldn't help feeling a little curious about what mother 
and Mr. Florestan could find to talk about all that time. 
I tried to practice, but found myself repeatedly running to 
the open window to look at them. 

He took his leave at last without coming into the house 
to see me, which I thought was a little ungrateful on his 
part after my having given him his tea yesterday afternoon. 

“ What secrets have you and your neighbor been talking, 
m^amie 9” I said, when mother came slowly in at the draw- 
ing-room window, looking grave and thoughtful. 

“ Don't ask to know too much, my pet We have been 
talking of a page in the book of the past. Nothing that 
touches my Daisy. " 

“ You have been talking of my father?" 1 said. 


100 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


She did not deny it. 

I ask no more questions, knowing how easily she is sad- 
dened by any thought of the past. Yet I could not help 
wondering and wondering and wondering all day long what 
connection there could be between Mr. Elorestan and my 
dear father’s fate. 

M(ty 30^/i. — It is a fortnight since I wrote the last line in 
my diary; we have all migrated to Grosvenor Square. 

The house is lovely; every detail that can minister to the 
comfort and convenience of its inhabitants has been studied 
and thought out. My rooms are delicious — coloring, form, 
everything in excellent taste, outlook sunny, flowers in all 
the windows, brightness and prettiness everywhere, and yet 
I find myself regretting Eiver Lawn every hour of my life, 
and 1 have a shrewd suspicion that mother feels very much 
as I do. Already she has been talking about August, when 
we shall go back to Lamford. 

The Drawing-Room is for to-morrow, and my court 
gown has come home from Mme. Martinet’s, a train of 
thick dull white silk, which falls in massive statuesque 
folds; a white satin petticoat covered with crystal beads, 
all one sparkle, dazzling, iridiscent. The costume is a 
marvel of brilliant simplicity. Mother has given me the 
pearl necklace she wore at her presentation three-and- 
twenty years ago, and Uncle Ambrose has given me a set of 
diamond stars which are to fasten the ostrich plumes in 
my hair and on my shoulders. Cyril brought his offering 
this morning — a sapphire half-hoop ring — the second he 
has given me. The first was given me in Venice, where he 
bought it at one of the jewelers in the dear little Mer- 
ceria — a double half-hoop of diamonds and rubies. 

5 |« * % * ^ 4 : ♦ 

June 1st . — The awful ceremony is over, without any 
hitch, and I hope without any gaucherie upon my part. 1 
have seen the face of majesty, for mother and 1 were early 
at the palace, and the queen had not retired when our turn 
came. My gown has been admired, and is laid by m 
lavender, and I am now formally introduced to society, 
and have all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of a 
young person who is “ out.” 

Cyril is not to be allowed the splendors and luxuries of 
Grosvenor Sq^uare until after our marriage. His father 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


191 


thinks that as a bachelor he is better off in the Albany, 
where he has a delightful set of rooms, and where he may 
keep dogs, entertain his Oxford friends, and smoke as 
much as he likes. 

If 1 were a young man with such advantages I should 
never want to marry. 

My cousins have expressed themselves very decidedly 
about my future life in Grosvenor Square. They can not 
believe it possible that any young couple could be happy 
under the same roof as their father and mother. 

“ I should prefer the shabbiest little flat in the Edgware 
Road to your splendid apartments,^^ said Dora. “ The 
plan may answer very well in France. There is a kind of 
childishness about the French which makes them look up 
to their parents in a positively ridiculous way;' but it will 
never do in an English household. Mark my words, Daisy, 
it will never do.^^ 

I told her that almost the chief consideration in my en- 
gagement to Cyril was the idea that I should not be parted 
from my mother when I became his wife. 

“ If that consideration influences you, my dear, depend 
upon it you donT care two straws for the man,^^ she an- 
swered, in her horrid way. 

I see a good deal of my cousins now I am living in town. 
They And Grosvenor Square nearer the park than Harley 
Street, and often drop in to luncheon after their morning 
walk. 

They walk in the Row in the morning, and ride before 
dinner daily, as if it were a part of their religion. 

“ And yet,’^ my aunt says, “ I have not had one eligible 
offer for either of them.^^ 

I think there is something really pathetic in that “ yet.^^ 


CHAPTER XV. 

FLOKESTAK GAINS A CLEW. 

Gilbert Florestan was among the idlers who saun- 
tered in the Mall to watch the passing youth and beauty on 
that particular afternoon on which Margaret Hatred made 
her courtesy to the queen. He who was not usually a 
flaneur in fashionable places, wasted a solid hour in wait- 
ing for Mrs. Arden^s carriage, for although the ladies were 
early the gentleman^s impatience made him earlier, and he 


192 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


had been standing about nearly an hour when the new 
neatly appointed landau came in view, and he wasted an- 
other half hour in loitering along with the slowly crawling 
line of carriages, and stopping to talk to Mrs. Arden and 
her daughter whenever there was an opportunity. 

“ I wanted to see you both in your court plumes/’ he 
said, smiling at the two fair faces, framed in snowy feathers 
and flashing gems. “ I could not conceive the notion of 
Miss Hatred in a court train.” 

“ You should have come to Grosvenor Square for an 
early luncheon, and then you might have seen the train,” 
answered Clara. 

“ Oh, I can see it now, only it is transformed into a bil- 
lowy background for the young ladies’ throat and shoul- 
ders, like the drapery of a water-nymph riding on a nau- 
tilus shell, as painters love to paint it. 1 assure you. Miss 
Hatred, it is infinitely becoming. ” 

“ You have caught the tone of St. James’ Park in the 
days of Steele and Addison,” said Mrs. Hatred. 

“ It is the influence of the genus loci. I feel as if 1 were 
one of the characters in ‘ Love in a Wood.’ Ah, those gal- 
lant, tender, light-hearted days are gone, Mrs. Hatred — 
the days when love and gallantry ruled the world — when 
battles were won and lost for a petticoat, and when ad 
mankind lived and died for love. We are much wiser now- 
adays, and ever so much more prosaic. I am going back 
to my den in the Champs Elysees to-morrow. Is there 
anything in this world I can do for you in Paris?” 

“ Only to follow up the inquiry you began so success- 
fully,” Clara answered, gravely. 

“ Be sure I will do my uttermost, but I fear the road 
has ended in a decided no thoroughfare. And for you, 
Miss Hatred — will you not intrust me with some little 
commission which shall be to me as a lady’s glove in a 
knight’s helmet? Have you no refractory shoemaker or 
dilatory glover on the other side of the Channel whom I 
may harry for you?” 

“No, Mr. Florestan, mother and I are British enough 
to find ad we want in London.” 

“ Another instance of the degeneracy of the times. In 
Lady Mary Montagu’s day, a man who went to Paris car- 
ried a string of delicate commissions from his fair young 
friends. The parcel post has demolished that particular 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


193 


branch of gallantry. I shall send yon a box of chocolate 
caramels as a reward for good behavior if you get yourself 
out of the royal presence without tripping over your train. 
Good-bye.'’^ 

He stood with his hat lifted as the carriage moved slowly 
on. They were close to the palace gates by this time. 

“ Why is he going back to Paris so soon, I wonder?^’ 
speculated Daisy, with a piteous little look which startled 
her mother with a suggestion of danger that had never 
occurred to her before. 

“ My dear Daisy, he lives in Paris. What more natural 
than that he should go back.^’^ 

“Why should he prefer Paris to Fountainhead? It 
seems unreasonable!^' 

“ He will settle at Fountainhead by and by, no doubt, 
when he marries. 

“Is he engaged to be married, do you think, mother?'’ 

“ I have no idea; but 1 fancy if he were engaged he 
would have talked about 

“ 1 don’t know. Some men are so secret and reserved! 
Uncle Ambrose, for instance. See how he went on ador- 
ing you in secret for years.” 

“ Mr. Florestan may have some attachment, but if he 
were engaged I think he would have spoken about his 
sweetheart. What does it matter, dearest? He is noth- 
ing to us except a friendly neighbor.” 

“ No, only a friendly neighbor; but one wants to know 
all about him.” 

Gilbert Florestan went back to the bachelor lodgings 
and the bachelor life. He had stayed nearly three weeks 
at Fountainhead, and he had seen a good deal of Daisy and 
her mother, both before and after their migration; for 
Grosvenor Square is within little more than an hour’s 
journey of Lamford for him who will take an express 
train and a fast hansom, and Mr. Florestan had dined once 
and taken afternoon tea three times in the new house, and 
had happened to meet the two ladies at three different 
picture-galleries. 

He had studied Daisy’s character and disposition as if 
she had been one of Shakespeare’s heroines, and he found 
her perfect as Desdemona in her meek purity, spontaneous 
as Juliet in her girlish transparency of mind and soul. 


194 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


She was all this, but she was the plighted wife of another 
man, whom she no doubt adored. It was not because she 
was somewhat cold and careless in her treatment of her 
lover that she loved him the less, Mr. Florestan told him- 
self. They had been companions from childhood, and 
love had become a matter of course. 

He went back to Paris, where the season was still at its 
height, although the worldlings were beginning to talk of 
their favorite maladies, and to discuss Auvergne and the 
Pyrenees, Aix and the Austrian Tyrol. Florestan in his 
present humor cared very little about fashionable society. 
He had his friends and companions in the world of literat- 
ure and art, and in this particular world he tried to dis- 
cover the character and antecedents of Duverdier, the man 
he met in Mine. Quijada^s salon. He also made certain 
inquiries about Mme. Quijada herself. 

The ultimate result of a good deal of trouble was as fol- 
lows: M. Duverdier was not known to literature or art. 
The painters and literary men had never heard of him, but 
he was known as an habitue of the Boulevard Theaters, 
and of some of the fastest and most furious of the restau- 
rants. He was said to be a Spaniard, and to have only ap- 
peared in Paris within the last two years; and yet this de- 
scription of him seemed strangely at variance with his 
modes of speech, which were essentially argotic and Paris- 
ian, albeit that his accent was not Parisian. He was de- 
scribed as an idle visionary, with pretensions to be a man 
of science and an inventor, but he had never been known 
to take out a patent for so much as a new kind of cork- 
screw. He had been known also to dabble in mining 
speculations, and had more than once been obliged to swim 
for his life in troubled waters. 

Of Mme. Quijada nothing was known except that she 
had a beautiful daughter, whom she kept as close as a nun. 
It was supposed that there must be some one in the back- 
ground, some one who kept dark, and who was the source 
of that magnificence in jewels and that luxury in hot-house 
flowers which contrasted so curiously with the lady’s un- 
pretending manner of life. 

There was something in this little household of the Rue 
St. Guillaume which interested Florestan, although he 
had not the slightest disposition to fall in love with the 
beautiful Dolores. He was only in her as a study in hu- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


195 


man nature, a leaf in the great book of humanit}^ For 
personal feeling he was more moved by the faded, gray- 
haired cousin than by Mine. Quijada’s daughter. 

He might have been still more interested in Louise Mar- 
cet could he have been present at an interview between her 
and Leon Duverdier, which took place on the morning of 
his return to Paris. 

It was nearly a month since Duverdier’s urgent applica- 
tion for a loan, and since his threat of suicide, a threat 
which had not been carried out. He walked into Mine. 
Quijada’s salon, as usual, unannounced, and found Louise 
alone, busy in the arrangement of the flowers, a duty which 
was always intrusted to her, and in which she exhibited an 
artistic taste. 

A heavy Marechal Niel rose dropped from her hands at 
the sight of Duverdier, and she moved toward the door 
without a word, an expression of intense aversion upon her 
pale, rigid face. 

“ Stop,” he cried, in a brutal tone. You’re the person 
1 want to talk to this morning. I saw my aunt and 
Dolores get out of a fly and go into a milliner’s in the Rue 
de la Paix, and I came here on purpose to see you. I 
won’t stand being avoided as if I were a pestilence. ” 

She stopped near the door, and stood looking at him 
fixedly, but without uttering a word. 

“ What dumb devil has got into you?” 

“ I have nothing to say to you,” she answered, sternly; 
“ I will have no dealings with you — will hold no inter- 
course with you. If you were dying of fever I would not 
give you a drink of water.” 

“You are a nice young woman to live in a Christian 
land, and yet I suppose you call yourself a good Catholic. 
Now, listen to me: you are a virago, and you are a mono- 
maniac; but you have more hard common sense than your 
cousin or her mother, and you know that I am not a man 
to be trifled with. I must have five hundred pounds be- 
fore next Saturday. It is absurd for my aunt to make any 
difficulty about it. Old Perez is a gold mine, and she has 
only to put in her hand and take out as much gold as she 
wants.” 

“ And you are despicable enough to trade upon your 
cousin’s infamy?” 

“ There is no infamy in the question. I consider my 


196 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


cousin's 2 )osition, as the adored — adopted daughter, let us 
say — of an old millionaire, eminently respectable. There 
are duchesses in Paris who are not half so virtuous. And 
if she is ashamed of her position it only remains with her 
to regularize it. The old fool would marry her to-morrow 
if she were not too stupid and too indifferent to bring him 
to the point." 

“ She hates that terrible old man too intensely to tie 
herself to him for life — she is weary of her existence as his 
slave." 

Is she? Let her help me to make a fortune then, and 
she shall be my queen. I only want a little capital to carry 
on experiments which must result in a mine of wealth — 
yes, as big a gold mine as old Perez has made for himself 
on the Bourse, and a more glorious fortune; for it will 
bring fame with it, the fame of the inventor. Tell her 
that I must have the money, Louise, or something desper- 
ate will come of her refusal to help me. I have tided over 
a month since I asked her for a loan, but 1 can not go on 
much longer. I am deeply in debt, and all the most pre- 
cious things in my laboratory will be seized by my credit- 
ors, and that will mean utter ruin. Tell her she must 
help me — tell her when you are alone with her. Leave 
that old harpy, my aunt, out of the discussion. I know 
Dolores will find me the money if she is left to her own in- 
clination. " 

“ I will not be your intermediary. I will have nothing 
to do with you; and I only hope that Dolores will be wise 
enough to refuse you any further help. She must know 
that you have lied to her about your schemes and experi- 
ments, your speculations, and wild dreams of wealth, not 
once, but many times. She must know that you have 
been leading an idle, profligate life in the very worst com- 
pany in Paris, while you were pretending to be a genius 
and an inventor and to live only for science. She does not 
know as much about you as 1 do; but she must know that 
you are false to the core; she must know that you have 
traded upon her love for you, and will go on trading upon 
it to the end; that there is no baseness, no depth of shame, 
to which you will not stoop to gain your own base ends. 
She does not know what I know, that you are as cruel as 
you are mean and false. " 

The livid pallor of her hollow cheeks was intensified by 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


197 


the burning hectic spot which glowed like a live coal on 
each, and gave an added luster to the gleaming eyes — eyes 
that had grown too large for the pinched and haggard face. 

Sacrebleu cried Duverdier, “you are usually pos- 
sessed by a dumb devil, but when you do talk, by Heaven, 
it is a torrent. No matter, I am not generally in need of 
an intermediary with a pretty woman, and I have no doubt 
1 shall be able to come to an understanding with Dolores 
before long.^^ 

This conversation took place in the morning. Gilbert 
riorestan called in the Eue St. Guillaume on the follow- 
ing evening. He found Duverdier established in a fautenil 
beside the sofa on which Dolores was sitting, looking very 
lovely in a flowing tea -gown of palest pink silk, which set 
off at once the grace of her supple, slender figure, and a 
pendant and bracelet of magnificent sapphires. Florestan 
had never seen her wear these gems until to-night; and he 
guessed that they were a recent gift from her mysterious 
protector. 

He pitied her all the more when he saw these new tokens 
of her slavery, for the wearer’s eyes had a look of profound 
sadness, while the mother’s hard and cruel face was radi- 
ant with recent triumph. Louise Marcet was not in the 
salon. He and Duverdier were the only visitors, and he 
had a perfect consciousness that he was not wanted by any 
one except Mme. Quijada, who received him with marked 
empressmenty and begged him to stop till eleven o’clock. 

“ 1 fear my salon is the dullest in all Paris,” she said, 
“ but you must remember that we are exiles, and have 
lived in the strictest retirement ever since we left Madrid.” 

Florestan protested that there was nothing he preferred 
to a small and quiet circle, society in which conversation 
really meant the interchange of thoughts. He talked of 
Madrid, a city in which he had spent three years of his 
diplomatic career, and although Mme. Quijada fenced with 
his questions with supreme ability, it was obvious to him 
that her knowledge of the Spanish capital was superficial, 
and that she could never have occupied a good social posi- 
tion in any part of Spain. 

“ If she ever lived in Madrid, she lived there as she lives 
in Paris, as an adventurer and an outcast, outside the 
pale,” he told himself. 

Her refinement he believed to be the thinnest veneer. 


198 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


laid on in later womanhood; her education was of the 
smallest, yet she contrived to discuss every subject that 
was mooted, political, social, or literary, with an aplomb 
which carried her further than the widest knowledge will 
carry a diffident conversationalist. Duverdier openly 
sneered at some of her observations, and provoked more 
than one vindictive glance from the southern eyes. 

Dolores talked very little, and for the most part in con- 
fidential tones only meant to reach her cousin^s ear. 

Duverdier talked like a man who had seen the world of 
men and knew the world of books. All his ideas and 
theories belonged to the most advanced school. He looked 
forward to a millennium of science, a millennium of social- 
ism, when the forces of nature should be the willing slaves 
of men, and hard work, the sweat of the laborer’s brow, 
should be ancient history, and when the governing powers 
of the world should be reduced to the lowest point, when 
armies and navies should have become a tradition of the 
Dark Ages, and poverty and starvation should seem as 
mythical as the rape of Proserpine or the birth of Minerva. 

He spoke with a suppressed boastfulness of a certain in- 
vention of his own which was fast approaching perfection, 
and which would revolutionize the coal mines of France 
and ultimately of the world, an application of electricity 
to the working of the mine and the carriage of the coal, 
which would minimize labor and achieve in less than a 
month the results which now require a year. 

Dolores listened with admiring looks and fullest faith in 
the speaker. Mme. Quijada looked the disbelief and aver- 
sion which she may have feared to express in words. 
Florestan felt that the atmosphere was charged with elec- 
tricity, and that the storm might burst at any moment, yet 
he prolonged his visit till a few minutes after eleven, at 
which hour Duverdier made no sign of departure. 

He determined to follow up his inquiries about this mys- 
terious family until he should come at a clearer understand- 
ing of their position and history. The first point he had 
to discover was the identity of the unseen admirer who 
supplied the mother and daughter with their evidently 
ample means. He had considerable difficulty in sifting 
the various accounts that were offered of the secluded 
beaut3^ She had been seen in public just often enough to 
excite curiosity in that section of society which claims to be 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 109 

familiar with' all the scandals of the demi-monde, and she 
had acquired a kind of distinction by her retired life. 

After hearing three or four different people mentioned as 
the hidden Croesus whose purse paid for Dolores Quijada’s 
jewels and other caprices, he was finally informed upon re- 
liable authority that her protector was a certain Diego Perez, 
a Spanish Jew, and the largest dealer in Spanish American 
securities upon the Paris Bourse. He was old and eccen- 
tric, of nervous temperament, and strange, solitary habits. 
He was said to be lavish in his generosity to Dolores and 
her mother, but was also said to be tyrannical in his ex- 
actions, insisting that the girl he admired should live like 
a cloistered nun, and promising to reward her by a large 
bequest, even if he did not make her his wife. FlorestaiPs 
informant, whose knowledge was derived from the Span- 
iard's confidential clerk, added that it Dolores had cared to 
exercise her influence over the old man she might have 
easily brought him to the matrimonial point; but she hated 
Perez and was madly in love with a good-for-nothing cous- 
in, upon whom she was reputed to have squandered a good 
-deal of money, since without ostensible resources he had 
been able to meet his engagements on the Bourse after 
more than one unlucky venture. 

Of Duverdier Florestan could learn nothing further. He 
lived on a fourth floor in a street near the Pantheon, and he 
dabbled in experiments in chemistry and electricity; but 
in spite of these scientific tastes he was said to be an idler 
and a pretender, who had never brought the smallest 
scheme to a successful result. 

“ A man of schemes and dreams,’’ said Florestan’s in- 
formant; “ an idle vagabond who is content to live upon 
women.” 

“ An idle vagabond who is content to live upon wom- 
en. ” Musing over those words as he walked under the 
trees in the Champs Elysees on his way homeward, after a 
night at a bohemian club in the Boulevard Michel, Flores- 
tan was suddenly reminded of the story of Antoinette Morel 
and her brother, and the hundred-pound note. 

Claude Morel, a chemist’s assistant, alone in Paris with 
an only sister, whose heart was almost broken by the loss 
of her English lover. 

Louise Marcet, a woman who in every look and accent 
bore the tokens of a great sorrow, might, allowing for the 


200 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


etfecfc of grief and illness, be the age of Antoinette Morel, 
who would now be about thirty. 

What if he had stumbled accidentally upon the very 
couple of whom he was in quest? What if Leon Duver- 
dier and Louise Marcet were Claude Morel and his sister 
Antoinette hiding under changed names? The very fact 
of the altered names would be significant of evil, and would 
give rise to the darkest suspicion. 

Claude Morel, a proscribed Communist, was known to 
have escaped arrest and to have fled to London with his 
sister after the last days of the Commune, and it was 
within the close of the Commune that Robert Hatrell was 
murdered by an unknown foreigner in a London lodging- 
house. 

There was that in the countenance and manner of Louise 
Marcet which told of a more harrowing grief than an ordi- 
nary love affair which had ended in parting. She had the 
aspect of one over whose youth there had passed some great 
horror, a grief too terrible to be outlived or forgotten. 
Those premature gray hairs, the deep lines upon the pallid 
forehead, the sunken cheeks and haggard eyes were the 
lasting witnesses of an undying agony, and her horror of 
Duverdier had been expressed in an unmistakable manner 
on the night when Florestan saw her start up and leave 
the room at his entrance. 

He remembered her extraordinary emotion upon hearing 
Miss Hatrell’s name at the opera, the keen interest with 
which she had looked at mother and daughter. 

He had forgotten the incident until this moment, en- 
grossed in far different thoughts, but it came back to him 
vividly to-night, and for the moment it seemed to him con- 
clusive evidence of some past and strong link between 
Louise Marcet and the name of Hatrell. 

Yet, he reflected presently, the association might be of 
another nature than that which he imagined. The chem- 
istry might have no bearing upon the existence of Claude 
Morel, the chemist’s assistant. The idea that Louise Mar 
cet and Leon Duverdier were brother and sister might be 
utterly without foundation. 

“At any rate I will try to put my suspicions to the 
test,” he said to himself. “ If Louise Marcet is the emo- 
tional woman 1 take her to be it will be easy to shake her 
firmness and to see behind the veil.” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


201 


He determined to make an early opportunity of being 
alone with the strange, pale woman, wWa untold sorrow 
had touched him from their first meeting. lie was haunted 
all through a wakeful night with shapes of horror — the 
fantastic picture of the murder in the shabby Bloomsbury 
lodging; the face of Leon Duverdier, cruel and callous, in 
the very act of murder; the face of Robert Hatred, which 
he remembered in his boyhood — frank, open, attractive. 

It was a mere chimera, doubtless, this wild fancy about 
Leon Duverdier, a nightmare dream engendered out of the 
small social mystery of the Rue St. Guillaume — a very 
common story, after all, common as dirt. A wicked moth- 
er; a beautiful girl sold like a slave in an Eastern market; 
wealth, luxury, infamy, ennui, and vexation, jumbled to- 
gether in two shameful lives, that did well to hide their in- 
famy from the world^s ken. He had brooded too long over 
this commonplace domestic drama, and now he must needs 
try to establish a link between these three women and the 
murder in Denmark Street. 

Foolish as the fancy might be, he meant to test it to the 
uttermost, and for this purpose went to the chief ofiice of 
the criminal police of Paris early next morning, and con- 
trived to get admitted to one of the heads of the depart- 
ment. 

To this gentleman he recalled the circumstances of 
Robert Hatrell’s murder. 

The murderer was supposed to be a Swiss,” he said. 
“ but that was a purely speculative idea, founded upon his 
statement that he was a journeyman watchmaker. One 
part at least of that statement — the assertion that he was 
employed by a well-known firm in Cornhill, was proved to 
be false. The name of Antoinette, which was used as a 
decoy to lure him to his death, is the name of a girl he 
knew in Paris. The girPs brother was known to be vin- 
dictively disposed toward him, although her relations with 
Hatrell were perfectly innocent, and he acted as a man of 
honor throughout. The mention of the girPs name is to 
my mind a conclusive proof that Claude Morel was con- 
cerned in the murder if he was not the actual murderer. I 
wonder that the attention of the French police was not 
called to this case, and that no effort was made to find the 
murderer upon this side of the Channel, seeing the large 
reward that was offered by Mr. HatrelPs widow.” 


202 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“ It was too soon after the Commune. We had our 
hands overfull at that time. The police of this city have 
only one fault, monsieur. 

“ And that is?’’ 

There are not half enough of them. The French 
police are the most highly trained body in Europe, yet 
crime stalks rampant in the capital from midnight till 
morning; the wolves so much outnumber the sheep dogs. 
1 owe that it was an oversight on our part not to hunt down 
Claude Morel. His name was in the black book of the 
Commune for more tlian one petty villainy, but he slipped 
through our fingers, escaped the guns at Satory and (he 
exportations from Havre. Had he paid the legal penalty 
for his offenses his secret would have been safe in our 
hands. 1 suppose you know that it is our rule never to 
divulge the antecedents of a format who has served his 
time.” 

“ That seems rather hard upon the non-criminal classes 
who may ally themselves with an ex-felon for want of a 
knowledge of the past which would serve as a warning.” 

“ I will not dispute that point, but it is a part of our 
code of honor. A criminal who is trying to recover his 
place in society has nothing to fear from us so long as he 
leads an honest life. Claude Morel, however, belongs to 
another category. For the undetected felon we have no 
mercy.” 

“ Will you do what you can to ascertain if he has been 
in Paris since ’72?” asked Florestan. 

“ Yes, I will institute an inquiry — but a fox of that 
breed is good at winding and doubling, and not easy to 
hunt down. I do not think he would set his foot in Paris, 
after being concerned in more than one row that involved 
rapine and bloodshed, especially if he was afterward im- 
plicated in a murder in London. He would be more likely 
to try the new world — America or Australia.” 

“ He might keep away for a few years, and then venture 
back, emboldened by the passage of time. There is a man 
whose character and surroundings are an enigma to me, 
and whom I am most anxious to understand more clearly. 
1 will pay the expenses of any investigation you maybe able 
to get made into the existence of this man.” 

“Who is he?” 

“ He calls himself Leon Huvcrdier, but I have a shrewd 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


203 


suspicion that he is no other than Claude Morel. I wonder 
whether there is any member of your force who remembers 
Morel, and could identify him after a lapse of years?’" 

“ There are plenty of men who were engaged in hunting 
down the Communists, but Morel was never a man of 
mark. I doubt if his personal appearance would be re- 
membered by any of our men. You had better leave tlie 
matter in my hands for a few days, and I will see what 
can be done. You can get me the details of this London 
murder, and a report of the inquest, I suppose?"'' 

“ Yes; I have the newspapers with their report of the 
inquest and the inquiry before the magistrate. 1 will get 
all the particulars copied, and send you the copy. The 
Parisian police ought not to lose the chance of such a bonus 
as five hundred pounds."" 

On the following morning Gilbert Florestan was early on 
foot, sauntering in the neighborhood of the flower-market 
near the Boulevard Michel. He had heard Mme. Quijada 
say that her niece went every morning to the flower-mar- 
ket to make her own selections for the daily supply, and 
he relied upon meeting her there. 

He was not disappointed. She made her appearance be- 
tween eight and nine o"clock, very plainly dressed in a 
black merino gown and a black straw bonnet, and carrying 
a light basket on her arm. He waited about while she 
made her purchases, and when she had filled her basket, 
and was walking along the Quai in a homeward direction, 
he followed her and addressed her. 

“ Good-morning, Mademoiselle Marcet. 1 hope you are 
not in a hurry this morning,"" he said, walking by her side. 

She looked round at him with a nervous, apprehensive 
air, and quickened her pace. 

“ 1 have always a great deal to do of a morning,"" she 
answered, quickly. “ Yes, I am rather in a hurry."" 

“ Not so much so as to deny me ten minutes" private 
conversation, I hope,"" he said. “ There is something 
about which I want to talk to you most particularly— ■some- 
thing which dates from the evening we met at the opera, 
when you saw Robert HatrelPs widow in the stalls."" 

Her pale face flashed for a moment or so, and then grew 
paler than before. He had no doubt of the emotion caused 
by the mere sound of the murdered man"s name. 

His intention had been to ask her to walk as far as the 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


2 4 

Luxembourg Gardens with him, so that he might have 
leisure and quiet for serious conversation, but he saw such 
avoidance and apprehension in her manner that he deemed 
it wiser to come to the point at once. There were not 
many people upon the Quai at this hour, and be came to a 
stand-still near a display of shabby second-hand literature, 
and stood there quietly expectant, while Louise Marcet 
leaned against the stone parapet, pallid and trembling, 
almost as if she were on the point of fainting. 

“ His name moves you now as it moved you then,^^ he 
said, earnestly, laying his hand upon her arm as it hung by 
her side, while she leaned with the other elbow upon the 
stone slab. “ I am assured that you could throw a new 
light upon his cruel death, that it is in your power to 
bring about the discovery of his murderer.” 

“ 1 doiTt know what you are talking about,” she said. 
” Who is Robert Hatrell— and what is Robert llatrell to 
me?” 

She pronounced the name with difficulty, but she pro- 
nounced it more correctly than a French woman would 
have pronounced an English name unheard before. 

“ Robert Hatrell is a man who was lured to his death by 
a woman’s name, and that name was yours!” said Flores- 
tan, with conviction, holding her arm in his strong grasp, 
looking straight into her eyes, which tried in vain to evade 
that direct gaze. ” But for his regard for you, his fidelity 
to tender memory, he would never have been tempted into 
the house where he was slaughtered. That house was a 
guet-apens, and you were the assassin’s lure, and if that 
assassin was your brother, it is not the less your duty to 
denounce him. So cold-blooded and cruel a murderer de- 
serves no mercy even from his nearest of kin.” 

” I don’t know what you are talking about,” she repeat- 
ed, doggedly, with trembling lips. 

” Oh, but you do, you do — every line in your face ac- 
knowledges what your false lips deny. You think it is a 
sister’s duty to shield a brother, to be dumb or to lie in 
his defense, even when that brother is little better than a 
beast of prey. You shrink from him with undisguised 
loathing, you will not stay in the same room with him, yet 
you allow your cousin to waste her love upon him, and you 
do not v.^arn her that the man with whom she associates in 
confiding affection has the heart of a tiger, and would stop 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


205 


at no crime that would serve his own interest. You know 
what he is, and you know, by the light of the past, what 
may be expected of him in the future. Do you think that 
the Denmark Street nlurderer is a man to stop at his first 
crime, or at his second? Given such a nature as that and 
the occasion will give birth to the crime. 

“ You talk in riddles— in riddles,"’ she said, helplessly, 
looking from side to side like a wild animal at bay. 

“ You refuse to trust me. You deny that your real 
name is Antoinette Morel, and that you are the sister of 
Claude Morel, the Communist?” 

” My name is Louise Marcet.” 

“ Very well, remember I have warned you. In Claude 
Morel’s first crime you were only the decoy. Who knows? 
Ill his second you may be the victim.” 


CHAPTER XVI. 

FKENCH LEAVE. 

Gilbert Florestan, who had not been remarkably 
energetic in the pursuit of any ambition or fancy of his 
own, could but wonder at the intensity which moved his 
thoughts and his actions in the pursuit of that investiga- 
tion which Mrs. Arden had confided to him. He could 
think of nothing else, undertake no other occupation, and 
Wlien his thoughts were not fixed upon Leon Duverdier and 
his supposed sister they were on the other side of the Chan- 
nel haunting River Lawn, or a certain house in Grosvenor 
Square, and following one particular girlish figure with an 
alarming persistence. 

He wanted to do the thing which Mrs. Arden had given 
him to do, he wanted to prove how difficult a task he could 
accomplish in order to lessen the sorrow of her life; but 
even if he should succeed in bringing Robert Hatrell’s 
murderer to his doom and in lightening the anguish of the 
wife who lamented his dark fate, all the more acutely be- 
cause it was unavenged, would this great service done for 
Robert Hatrell’s widow bring him any nearer to Robert 
Hatrell’s daughter? AlasI no, he told himself. That 
young heart was given to another: that young life was 
pledged. Nothing he ould do would bring him any nearer 
to Daisy. He could never be more to her than he had been 
that sunny afternoon on the terrace by the river, when the 


206 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


uneasy look in the lovely hazel eyes had told. him that she 
wished him away. She had always been kind and courteous 
to him; but he was a nullity (o Cyril Arden’s future wife. 
It may be that her woman’s wit had guessed his secret, and 
that she was nervous and uneasy at any chance tete-a-tUe. 
lie had assuredly perceived something in her manner which 
a very vain man might have interpreted as the indication 
of a hidden preference, a growing regard against which she 
struggled, in duty bound to another. 

“ Why are mothers in such a hurry to give away (heir 
daughters’ future lives?” he asked himself, not knowing 
that Daisy had accepted her old playfellow of her own free 
will, pledging herself almost unawares, with that girlish 
lightness which disposes of women’s lives in a breath, for 
good or for evil. 

He felt that his case was hopeless, yet it was something 
to him to be able to devote himself to Mrs. Arden's serv- 
ice, to feel that there were confidence and friendship be- 
tween him and Daisy’s mother, friendship which would at 
least give him an excuse for seeing Daisy now and then and 
making himself a little more unhappy. 

Hopeless lovers cultivate the weed unhappiness as if it 
were a flower. 

Florestan had no more doubt that Mme. Quijada’s niece 
was Antoinette Morel than he had of his own identity. 
Her denial was in its mode and manner quite as good as a 
confession. He read the report of the ifiquest for a third 
time, and subseqent paragraphs describing the cashing of 
the bank-notes at Cannes and at Monte Carlo, and he was 
strongly inclined to believe that the elderly and aristocratic 
French woman who changed the notes was no other than 
Mme. Quijada. True, that the elderly lady’s white hair 
was a point in the description, while the Spanish lady’s hair 
was still black, but it would be only natural that a woman 
intrusted with such a critical mission would do her utmost 
to hide her identity. 

AVas it the same women who stopped Robert Hatred in 
Cranbourne Street and who appealed to him on behalf of 
the dying Antoinette. Yes, Florestan thought, the same; 
although the woman in Cranbourne Street was described by 
Colonel MacDonald as middle-aged. And if this were so. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


207 


Mme. Quijada had been her nephew’s aider and abettor in 
a diabolical murder. 

Would Antoinette, otherwise Louise, warn her aunt ot 
his suspicions? He determined to appear in the lady’s 
salon on her next evening in order to discover, if it were 
possible, what confidences had passed between the aunt and 
niece. His own idea of the situation was that the younger 
woman existed in her aunt’s house only on sufferance, and 
that there was suspicion on the aunt’s side and loathing on 
the side of the niece. 

He spent only half an hour in the Rue St. Guillaume. 
Louise was absent from the salon, suffering from a neuralgic 
headache, her aunt told him. Dolores looked pale and pre- 
occupied. There was no change in her mother’s manner, 
and Florestan concluded that Louise had told her nothing. 
There was no other visitor, and the dullness of the salon 
was oppressive. 

Before he left he contrived, in the most casual way, to 
ask an important question. 

He commented in a sympathizing tone upon Mile. Mar- 
cet’s delicate appearance and weak health, and then he 
asked abruptly: 

“ How long is it since she had that serious illness of 
which you told me?” 

“ A good many years; I really don’t remember how 
many,” replied Mme. Quijada. 

“ Oh, mother, you can’t forget the year,” cried Dolores, 
who had been yawning behind her fan. “ It was in ’72, 
the year we went to Madrid.” 

The year of Robert Hatrell’s murder. This answer set- 
tled two points. Antoinette’s illness, and the establish- 
ment of Mme. Quijada at Madrid, had been events of the 
same year. The horror of Claude Morel’s crime had been 
the cause of his sister’s brain fever. The proceeds of the 
crime had enabled Claude Morel’s accomplice to establish 
herself in the Spanish capital. Doubtless it was to Spain 
that the murderer had betaken himself, thinking it a safer 
refuge than the new world. His southern birth had made 
it easy for him to pass muster as a Spaniard. 

Florestan felt that he was getting the threads of the 
tangled skein into his hands. He called on the following 
day at the head-quarters of the Police de Surete, and was 


208 WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 

again admitted to the important official to whom he had 
confided his suspicions of Dnverdier. 

“ I have read the story of Mr. Hatrell’s murder/^ said 
this functionary, after receiving him with grave politeness, 
“ and 1 agree with you that the name of Antoinette, em- 
ployed as a lure, goes very near to fix the murder, or, at 
any rate, complicity with the murder, upon Antoinette^’s 
brother. Yet you must bear in mind that there are always 
remote possibilities in every case, and Ihe obvious solution 
of a mystery is not always the right solution. It is possi- 
ble that Mr. llatrell may have, talked of this youthful love 
affair, and that the name of his sweetheart may have been 
known to others besides her brother. 

“No oilier man would have had the same ‘inalignant 
feeling to prompt the crime,’’^ suggested Florest'an. 

“A crime which was to realize a gain of nearly four 
thousand pounds would need no prompting from sentiment 
or the sense of a past wrong. IIow can you account for 
MoreFs precise knowledge of Mr. IlatrelFs movements? 
Was he in frequent communication with Hatred at this 
time?’^ 

“ I should say decidedly not; but 1 have no absolute 
knowledge upon this point. * 

“ Then in all probability he was in communication with 
his sister’s former lover. It would be only natural for a 
man of that kind to try and trade upon his knowledge of 
the past.” 

“ I have to remind you that Mr. Hatred’s relations with 
the French girl were perfectly innocent.” 

The offi^l, who had grown gray in the experience of the 
worst socipy in Paris, shrugged his shoulders, and ex- 
pressed all^the doubt which an elderly and astute visage 
can express. 

“ Will you vouch for that fact?” he asked. 

“ Yesv I have it upon the evidence of the girl’s own 
letters, and from the lips of a worthy old lady in whom she 
confided. ” 

“Granted then that the intrigue was an innocent en- 
tanglement, mild as rose-water, Mr. Hatrell may yet have 
desired to keep the story from his wife, and may have 
allowed Claude Morel to hang upon him, and may thus 
have given him the opportunity to find out all about the 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 209 

intended visit to the bank, and the sum to be handed over 
in the lawyer’s office.”- # 

“ It must have been so. The movements of the mur- 
derer were too precise to have been guess-work or the result 
of accident. The murderer must have had detailed in- 
formation as to Mr. HatrelTs intended movements on the 
fatal day. That is the most mysterious point in the 
story.” 

“ Not very mysterious if Claude Morel were in frequent 
communication with Mr. Hatrell. ” 

“ Would Hatrell confide in a man who was spofiging 
upon him, a man he must have despised?” 

“ Perhaps not, but Mr. HatrelTs servants might furnish 
the information.” 

“ Servants would hardly have known the precise facts.” 

“ My dear sir, servants know everything. You English 
have a most pernicious habit of discussing your most pri- 
vate affairs at the dinner- table; the people who wait upon 
you hear and remember. However, this is beating about 
the bush. I have something to tell you as the result of the 
inquiry that has been made since you were last in this 
room.” 

“ You have discovered the identity of Morel and Duver- 
dier?” exclaimed Florestan, eagerly. 

“ Not conclusively; but we have discovered that Duver- 
dier is a man of the worst possible reputation — to have es-. 
caped deportation to New Caledonia. W e have discovered 
that on the strength of good looks and consummate 
audacity he has managed to live for the last seven years in 
Madrid and in Paris. Of course what we know of him in 
Spafn is at present only at second-hand; there has been Jio 
tim^fpr any direct inquiries in Madrid. We can not hear 
anything about him before he was known to the Spanish 
police as an adventurer, and under suspicion of having 
been concerned in a great jewel robbery at Madrid six 
years ago. I have dispatched my agent to that city, and 
he may be able to get more details on the spot. Iji the 
meantime there is one fact that tells strongly against Mon- 
sieur Leon Huverdier.” 

, “ And that is — ” 

“ He has made off. He has scented clanger, I believe, 
and lias disappeared from Paris before he could be asked 
any inconvenient questions.” 


210 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“ Is that really so?’" 

“ Yes. After I had read the account of the Denmark 
Street murder 1 had a desire to look at this Duverdier 
whom you take for Morel. I was told that he occupied an 
apartment on the Quai des Grands Augustins, so I put on 
one of the numerous disguises in which I pay visits of this 
kind, and in the character of a septuagenarian savant I 
sallied forth to call upon the experimentalist and inventor. 
I know enough of chemistry to sustain a conversation with 
as shallow a scientist as I take Duverdier to be. However, 
my capacity in this line was not put to the test. The con- 
cierge informed me that Monsieur Duverdier had left for 
Brussels upon the previous evening, and that he had no 
idea when he would return. He had left the key of his 
apartment with the concierge, and on being requested the 
man went upstairs with me and allowed me to investigate 
the deserted rooms.” 

“ Did you make any discoveries?” 

“Nothing of an incriminating nature. Two of the 
rooms are furnished with a showy vulgarity which bespeaks 
the tiger — velvet and gilding, photographs of actresses and 
demi-mondaines, a great display of pipes, foils,and boxing- 
gloves. A third and larger room is fitted roughly as a 
laboratory, and bears indications of recent experiments. 
1 asked the concierge if Monsieur Duverdier’s departure 
had been long in contemplation, and he told me that the 
first he had heard of the intended journey was the order for 
a cab to take Duverdier and his portmanteau to the station. 
He gave no date for his return, but said that he should not 
be long absent, and begged the man to look after his 
rooms while he was away. The concierge doubted if any 
of the furniture had been paid for, and anticipated a de- 
scent of the sheriff during the tenant’s absence.” 

“ Did you hear anything of Duverdier’s habits?” 

“ Nothing to distinguish him from the common run of 
profligates and spurious savants. Late hours and im- 
portunate creditors; occasional visits from mysterious 
women, who came closely veiled and shunned observation; 
rare intervals of seclusion and hard vvoik in the laboratory. 
I could see that he was not a favorite with the concierge, 
and that if there had been anything damaging to tell about 
him the man would have told it.” 

“ He has been warned by his. sister,” said Florestan, 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? .‘211 

after a thoughtful sileuce. “ I shovved my cards too 
soon/^ 

He told M. Crefoiit, the police agent, of his interview 
with Louise Marcet. 

“Yes, that was a mistake — although the interview may 
have gone far to confirm your suspicion. No doubt she 
told her brother that you were on the scent; and Morel, 
(dias Duverdier, has disappeared for an indefinite period. 
He would have no hesitation in leaving a city where he was 
deeply dipped, and which he might not be allowed to leave 
if he lingered much longer.’^ 

There was no more to be said. Whatever ideas M. 
Orefont had as to the possibility of any satisfactory solution 
of the mystery of Robert HatrelTs murder, be did not im- 
part them to Florestan, but simply took that gentleman’s 
check for the expenses incurred in the inquiries and inves- 
tigations that had been made at his request, and said that 
“ for the rest, time would show.’’ 

“ If this Duverdier is as black a villain as you believe 
him to be, or, in other words, if he is the Denmark Street 
murderer, he will be sure to put his neck under the knife. 
No such man stops at a single crime.” 

“ He is a man to be watched, then,” said Floreslan. 

“ Yes, he is a man to be watched; and 1 believe he will 
prove a man worth watching.” 


CHAPTER XVH. 
daisy’s diary in LONDON. 

It was an old fancy, and one which had haunted me 
from the first night 1 slept in Grosvenor Square. As I 
laid mvself down to rest in the pretty little bed, with its 
embroidered Japanese coverlet and cloud of white lace cur- 
tains — all devised by mother, so dainty and gracious— and 
as I heard the noise of the carriage wheels like the great 
hoarse roar of the sea, 1 said to myself, “ This is London, 
cruel London, the city in which my father was lured to his 
death — the city in which a good man may be murdered in 
broad daylight, on a sunny summer afternoon, in the very 
midst of his fellow-men. ” 

I could not sleep that first night for thinking of my dear 
dead father. I could not stop myself from picturing the 
awful scene over and over again— the ghastly change in 


212 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


the dear face — the horrid wound — the pitiless murderer 
whose face I could not picture to myself. 

Again and again and again I tried to shape that unknown 
face. I thought of all the villainous countenances I had 
seen in picture galleries— of this or that Judas, this or that 
murderer — the malignant face with dull, red hair, the 
swarthy face with close-cut black hair — the rugged features 
and beetling brow, the low, scarcely human forehead, 
under ragged tangled locks, all of the villainous and in- 
human that painters have ever conceived; yet I could never 
picture to myself the form and face of the man who killed 
my father. 

Night after night I have lain awake thinking of him. 
My father has been much more often in my thoughts since 
we came to London (han he was while we were at peaceful 
River Lawn, where 1 used to lie awake to hear the night- 
ingales in the warm June nights, and where the sound of 
the river was always like a lullaby. Here all the gayety 
and splendor, the operas and plays, the music and dancing, 
and talk and laughter are not enough to make me forget. 
“ In this city my father was murdered. If there were no 
such wilderness as London he might be living and among 
us to-day. He might be ours for many a year to come.^^ 

I think of Professor Palmer in the desert, lured to his 
fate by murderous Arabs. Was the desert worse than Lon- 
don? I think of all who have ever been treacherously slain 
in wild and lonely places; but I can think of no place worse 
than London. 

I want to see the house in which my father died. I 
want to see the room in which he was found lying stabbed 
to death. 

This is the fancy that has tormented me ever since we 
took up our abode in London, ever since the roll of the 
wheels and the tramp, tramp, tramp of horses’ feet have 
been in my ears. I feel as if I should think less of him, 
and be less haunted by the dreadful vision of that room if 
I could once see it in all its sordid reality, if I could know 
exactly what it is like. 

I have told Cyril my feelings on this point, but he re- 
fuses to take me to see the house, or even the street in 
which my father died. He can not understand me. He 
can not understand that this dreadful sensation of being 
haunted nightly by the vision of the deed and the room 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 213 

might be lessened by familiarity with the scene, however 
painful the sight of that horrible place might be. 

I have entreated him to take me there, but he stead- 
fastly refuses, so 1 have made up my mind to go there 
without him. Mother and her husband are going to a 
grand dinner this evening, to meet royalties; Cyril has 
gone to Oxford to dine with the Bullingdon Club. I shall 
have the evening all to myself, and I shall go to Denmark 
Street alone. 

1 suppose it is rather an awful thing for a girl of my age 
to go out after eight o’clock, and I have never been in the 
streets of London by myself at any hour; but I don’t care 
to take even my good Broomfield, for she would most like- 
ly make as many objections as Cyril, and I might fail in 
getting inside the house I want to see. I would rather de- 
pend entirely upon my own cleverness. 

1 know the number of the street, I know the position of 
the room, 1 know that it is a street of lodging-houses, so I 
can very easily make believe to be in search of lodgings. 1 
shall wait till the carriage has driven off with mother and 
Uncle Ambrose, and then 1 shall send down word to the 
butler that I have a headache and won’t dine. 1 shall tell 
Broomfield that I am going to lie down for an hour or two, 
upon which 1 know the dear soul, after having fussed 
about me with eau-de-Cologne and sal- volatile, and ar- 
ranged my pillows and reading-lamp, will go down to the 
servants’ hall at the very bottom of the house, and will be 
absorbed in gossip till my bell rings. 

I know where Uncle x\mbrose leaves the latch-key which 
he always uses when he comes in from a walk, so I can let 
myself in as quietly as 1 let myself out. Our hall and 
staircase when the heads of the family are out might for 
silence and solitude as well be in the sepulcher of one of 
the Pharaohs. 

I shall put on my very plainest gown, and a shabby little 
garden hat, so as to look like a work-girl, or anything 
common or insignificant. 

I hare seen that dreadful room — a commonplace, ill-fur- 
nished room in a shabby lodging-house, and the sight of it 
will haunt me to my dying day. Cyril was right and I 
was wrong. It was a senseless tiling to do, and 1 ought to 
have left it undone. 


214 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


Everything happened as I hoped. The pretended head- 
ache did me good service. I was mistress of my time 
and actions before nine o’clock. 1 slipped off my tea- 
gown and dressed myself for the character of a young 
woman in search of a respectable lodging at seven shillings 
a week. 1 suppose that is about the price work-girls pay. 

The evening was gray and dull, not dark, but thick and 
heavy, with an oppressive feeling in the atmosphere, as of 
stored-up heat and dust — such a different atmosphere from 
the cool dewy air in the garden at Lamford on a midsum- 
mer night. 

I had studied the map of London, and had carefully 
made out my way to Denmark Street, but seeing a benevo- 
lent-looking old cabman, with a red nose, creeping along 
close to the curb in Brooke Street, I hailed him, and told 
him to drive me to St. Giles’ Church. 

“ So I will, my dear, and 1 wish I was going to drive you 
there to be spliced,” he said, which shows how thoroughly 
common I must have looked in my garden hat, or it 
might be that the old man had been drinkiiig, for he rat- 
tled the cab over the stones, and zigzagged across the road 
in a really dreadful manner. If 1 had not been full of 
other thoughts 1 believe I should have feared for my life, 
especially when he took me round corners. 

He drew up in front of a church, in a shabby-looking 
street, where there were shops still open, though it was 
after nine o’clock. I gave him half a crown, which he did 
not seem to thiidi enough. 

“ Do you want me to wait for you, miss?” he asked. 
” You won’t get another cab in this neighborhood.” 

I said no, for I was shaken dreadfully by that one ride, 
and felt it would be tempting Providence to let him drive 
me again. 

My heart was beating violently, 1 hardly knew what I 
was doing; but 1 began telling myself to be calm and col- 
lected, and to remember that 1 was there in opposition to 
Cyril’s advice, and that I must prove worthy of my own 
self-confidence. 

I am not a fainting young person, indeed I never fainted 
in my life; but last night 1 was afraid that 1 was going to 
faint, and I had to struggle against a swimming in my 
head, and a painful sense of lightness which made me tot- 
ter a little as I turned into Denmark Street. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


215 


It was very quiet there. The street had an old -fashioued 
respectable air, which would have given me confidence if I 
had really been a hard-working young woman in search of 
a lodging. Some of the houses looked the picture of neat- 
ness, others were shabby and squalid. Against every door 
I observed a row of brass bells, which showed that there 
were several tenants in each house. 

1 saw the number I was in search of from the opposite 
side of the way. There was the tailor’s workshop which I 
had read about in the newspaper. The windows were wide 
open, and half a dozen men were at work in a glare of gas. 

I could not help thinking they looked like lost souls in 
Pandemonium — the bare dusty room, the glare and heat, 
on this summer night, when the stars were shining on all 
the bowery creeks and willowy islands near Lamford, where 
life and the world were so lovely for some people. 

Yes, that was (he tailor’s workshop, and it might have 
been one of those men who heard my father’s murderer go 
singing dowii the stairs, fresh from his deed of blood. 1 
think the idea of that, and the horror of it, braced my 
nerves, for I felt less like fainting as I crossed the road 
and knocked at the door of the fatal house. 

I waited for some minutes before any one came to the 
door, though I knocked a second time. Then a woman ap- 
peared, an elderly woman, who looked at me curiously. 

I told her 1 wanted a lodging — a respectable room at 
seven shillings a week; but she answered rather sharply that 
she only let lodgings to men — why prefer men, I wonder? 
— and she was going to shut the door in my face, when 1 
grew desperate, and stopped her by laying my hand upon 
her arm. 

“ There was a murder eight years ago in this house,” 1 
said. “ Let me see the room where it was done, and I’ll 
give you seven shillings.” 

I would as soon have offered her a sovereign, but I had 
got the sum of seven shillings in my mind in connection 
with the rent of a lodging, and I offered her that unthink- 
ingly. It was enough, however, for she snapped at my 
offer. 

“ Come in,” she said, looking at me very hard and very 
suspiciously all the time. “ That’s a curious fancy of 
3 ^ours. You haven’t anything to do with the murder, I 
hope?” 


216 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“No, no, no,^^ I cried. 

“ Tin glad of that,’" said she. “ Ah, he was a devil, 
that mail — a smooth-faced, smooth-tongued devil. The 
sight of him and the sound of his voice makes me sick and 
faint whenever I call him to mind. He put a blight upon 
me and on my house. Tve never been the same woman 
since.’’ 

1 asked her what the man was like, finding that she was 
willing to talk, and she described his appearance in a great 
many words, but her words did not conjure up any distinct 
image. 

He was good-looking and he was young. She did not 
take him for much over thirty. He was dark, with fine 
black eyes, and he wore a mustache, but no beard. He 
talked English, but he spoke like a foreigner. This was 
all I could gather from her. 

She went slowly up the stairs before me, with a paraffine 
lamp in her hand, and she flung open the door of the back 
room on the second floor and told me to go in, holding up 
the lamp on a level with her head that I might see the 
room. 

“I’ve kept it just as it was that day,” she said. “ I’ve 
never had a good let in all the eight years — not a per- 
manency. There’s a blight upon the room; but people 
come and look at it, as it might be you, and give me a 
trifle.” 

“ Oh, how horrid of people,” I said, forgetting myself, 
“ how can they be so morbid?” 

“Not more so than you, miss. It’s human nature,” 
she answered. 

I looked at the room, a square common-looking room, 
with very shabby furniture, a single window looking out 
upon roofs and chimney-stacks. All looked dark and 
dreary — the light of the flaring lamp only made the squalid 
furniture look more squalid. Oh, what a scene to meet 
those dying eyes! What horror in that one supreme agony 
to feel himself caught like a snared bird, trapped in such a 
hole as this! “ How did he look? Where did you find him 
lying?” 1 asked; and then she described that ghastly sight, 
showing me the spot where our dear one lay, gloating over 
every detail. 

I could have shrieked with agony as I listened to her. 
She had put down her lamp on the table, and she clawed 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


217 


my wrist with her skinny fingers as she pointed with the 
other hand to the floor, and she acted over all the scene, 
“ as it might be here,^’ “as it might be there, and she 
dwelt upon the look of the dead face until my heart seemed 
to turn to stone. 

I could not speak, I just let her go on. I had so wanted 
to know all — all that the commonest lips could tell — all, 
from any source, however cruel. I let her talk on to her 
hearths content, like a ghoul as she was; and then I went 
with her down-stairs somehow, quite numbed and cold, as 
if 1 had been in a nightmare dream, and I went out into 
the dark street. 

I made up my mind to walk home. I felt the air and 
exercise would give me my only chance of getting calm 
after the agony of that quarter of an hour. I walked on 
blindly for some distance, first in one street and then in 
another, going out of my way, I believe, yet vaguely mak- 
ing for the west. 1 had lost all sense of time, and when 
I heard the church clock strike and counted the strokes 1 
was surprised to find that it was only ten. 

It was almost immediately after this that 1 came into a 
long shabby-looking street, which looked so empty and des- 
olate that I felt as much alone in it as if I had been walk- 
ing in one of our Berkshire lanes. There was only one 
lighted spot in the street, and that looked like a hotel or 
a restaurant. 

It was a restaurant. As I got nearer on the opposite side 
of the street I saw the name: 

Restaurant du Pavillon. 

I was walking slowly, meaning to ask the first policeman 
I met to put me in the right way to Grosvenor Square, and 
not caring even if I went out of my way, for the cool air 
and the movement were helping me to get calmer, when 
three men came pouring out of the lighted door-way, talk- 
ing and laughing in a boisterous kind of way that made 
me think they were tipsy. One of them saw me, and called 
out something to his friends in French, to which the others 
replied in the same language, but I could not understand 
a word they said. I hurried my steps, and tried to get out 
of their reach, but the man who had spoken first came 
across the road and began talking to me, in English this 


218 


/HOSE WAS THE HAND? 


time, asking me where I was going, and whether I would 
go to a music hall with him and his friends. 

I can not record the horrid tone and manner of the man. 
I hate to remember his vulgar insolence. I hate to think 
that there are such men in the world, and that poor, hard- 
working-girls, such as I was supposed to be, are exposed to 
the insolence of such creatures, and have such hateful words 
forced upon their ears as they go quietly home from their 
work. The wretch caught hold of my arm, and urged 
me to go with him to some place which he called “ The 
Oxford,'^ while his friends, who spoke only in French, 
laughed and talked of my affected prudery. 

I was furious. I shook myself free from the wretch’s 
touch, and 1 looked up and down the street in despair for 
some one who would help me. 

“ How dare you speak to me or touch me, you most 
odious creature?” 1 cried, and then he took off his hat, in 
mocking acknowledgment of an imaginary compliment. I 
saw m the light of the lamp close above us that he had a 
swarthy complexion, like an Italian’s, and black eyes, and 
I remembered with a shudder the woman’s description half 
an hour before. 

There must be thousands t»f such men among the exiles 
who come to London for refuge; yet I shall never see such 
a face without recalling that unknown image of my father’s 
murderer. 

He pretended to think that my anger was only assumed, 
and went on with his hateful compliments and offers of 
supper and champagne at The Oxford, and I saw in my 
despair that there was not a mortal in sight to whom I 
could apeal for protection. 

The door of the restaurant stood open, and I could see 
lights and servants moving about inside. I had half a 
mind to rush across the street and go in at the open door, 
where no doubt some one would have taken my part against 
these horrid men. But my courage failed me in the next 
instant. It would have been such a wild thing to do, and 
how could I have faced half a dozen astonished waiters in 
the glare of that gas-lighted vestibule? 

I looked down the street again, and this time there was 
a promise of rescue in the shape of a hansom cab coming 
along rapidly, with two great flaming lamps, like a dragon 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 219 

with fiery eyes, the good dragon that comes to rescue for- 
lorn damsels and not to eat them. 

I ran into the road and hailed the driver without stopr 
ping to see if the cab were empty. While I waved my hand 
in frantic appeal — how ashamed of myself I feel to-day 
when 1 have to write about it in this cold-blooded journal 
— somebody inside dashed his stick up through the little 
trap-door in the roof just as frantically. The driver pulled 
up sharp, and a big, middle-aged man got out of the cab 
and came to me. 

How thankful I felt that he was so big and so middle- 
aged. I felt the utmost confidence in him, almost as if he 
had been my uncle. 

Is there anything the matter?’^ he asked, looking at 
my persecutors. 

“ Yes,^^ I answered, “ one of these men has been hor- 
ridly rude to me. They have all been rude; but that one,"^ 
I pointed to my worst tormentor, “has been the most 
offensive. 

“ He will not be offensive any more, unless he wants to 
be thoroughly well kicked,^^ said my friend, and he looked 
as if he would like to do it. 

“ Please douT take any trouble about him,'” I said, “ he 
is tipsy, I believe, and he is really not worth kicking. He 
wouldn’t know anything about it afterward, so it would be 
wasted trouble. If you would oblige so far as to give me 
your cab — you would be able to get another one very soon, 
1 suppose — I should be very grateful. ” 

1 had seen that he was not in evening dress, or I should 
have hardly ventured to make such a selfish request. 

“ My cab is quite at your service. Where shall I tell 
the man to drive you?” 

“ To Grosvenor Square. My name is Hatrell — Miss 
Hatrell.” 

1 repeated my name very distinctly, for I wanted my un- 
known friend to understand that I was not ashamed of my- 
self, although he found me in such a disagreeable position. 

Two of my assailants had sneaked off already, with a 
laugh and an air of being quite at their ease; but my chief 
tormentor stood as if he were glued to the pavement, star- 
ing at me in a dull and stupid w^ay, while I got into the cab, 
and shook hands gratefully with my nameless friend. He 
had been noisy enough ^ few ininutes before, when he wa^ 


220 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


doubtless in the loquacious stage of intoxication, but now 
he seemed to have passed into a silent and stony stage 
which was like stupefaction. 

One of his friends turned to look after him, when they 
had gone some little way ahead. 

“ Hola Duverdier! Veux lu te planter la toule la niiit 
he called out. 

So my tormentor’s name is Duverdier? 

I stopped the cabman at the corner of the square, paid 
him to his perfect satisfaction, for I had just emptied the 
silver in my porte-monnaie into his hand, and walked 
quietly to our own door, where 1 let myself in like the thief 
in the night. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 
daisy’s diary. 

How full of strange coincidences this life is. It is a 
small thing, of course, but still it has vexed and worried me 
more than I can say. This morning, the second after 
my wretched adventure in Church Street, I heard a most 
hatefully familiar voice in the hall as 1 came down-stairs 
from the second floor just before lunch. I stopped on the 
first-floor landing and listened to the voice below. I had 
not a shadow of doubt as to the owner of that hateful voice, 
even before I looked over the balustrade and saw the odious 
wretch standing in the bright light from the south window, 
talking to the butler. It was the man who tormented me 
with his insolent invitation to supper at The Oxford, the man 
who his companions called Duverdier. He was there in 
the morning sunshine — a creature who should only have 
been visible at night and in the shabbiest places. He was 
there in our pretty hall, against a background of pale soft 
color, with the beautiful marble face of Mnemosyne look- 
ing over his shoulder, with her finger-tip on her low broad 
brow, and her head bent as if in thought. There are 
several statues in the hall and the corridor, but Mnemosyne 
is my favorite among them all. 

“ Has Mr. Arden had my letters?” he asked, in his 
foreign English. 

“ Yes, sir, they have been given to him.” 

“ Three letters?” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


221 


“ Yes, sir/^ 

“ Two yesterday, and one this morning?’-’ 

‘‘ Yes, sir. They were all given to him.” 

‘‘And there is no answer. AVas that Mr. Arden’s 
message?” # 

“ Yes, sir. My master told me to tell you there was no 
answer.” 

“ And he declines to see me?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“ Very good.” 

He said very good with a face like a thunder-cloud. He 
lingered a little, brushing his hat with his coat cuff, in an 
agitated manner, and looking about him angrily, first at one 
door and then at another, as if he hoped to see Uncle Am- 
brose appear at one of them. At last he turned abruptly on 
his heel and went out without another word. I suppose 
he is one of that great army of begging-letter writers who 
assail both mother and Uncle Ambrose. I sometimes pity 
them, poor creatures, when 1 see the long, long letters, 
many of them so well written, consigned to the waste-paper 
basket, and perhaps some of those piteous letters may have 
a good deal of truth in them. It must seem to the shabby- 
genteel poor that people who live in such a house as this, 
and drive out in a fine carriage with splendid horses, and 
have a crowd of servants, and all that modern civilization 
can give of pleasure and prettiness — it must seem as if 
they ought never to say no to the appeal of real want. And 
yet if the rich people always said yes, the fine house and 
horses must go. I wonder if it is wicked to keep so much 
for ourselves, and give so little in proportion to what we 
keep. 

“ The half of my goods I have given to the poor,” said 
the Pharisee. Well, it is wrong to be proud, no doubt, 
but upon my word that Pharisee had some justification for 
thinking well of himself. 

I don’t think either mother or Uncle Ambrose give half 
their substance in charity, kind and generous as they both 
are. 

“ Did that foreign person tell you his name?” I asked 
the butler, as 1 went into the dining-room. 

“ No, ma’am.” 

“ And had he been here before to-day?” 

“ Yes, ma’am. He called yesterday evening to inquire 


222 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


if there was any answer to his letters. lie sent two letters 
by a commissionnaire — one in the morning and the other in 
the afternoon.'’’ 

What an importunate wretch the man must be. My 
blood runs cold at the thought that he may mean to tell 
my step-father about having seen me walking alone in 
Church Street late at night. lie might make up any stoi y, 
and I should have no witness against him; for I do not 
know the name of my good, middle-aged friend in the cab. 
If he dare to slander me I must tell Uncle Ambrose the 
whole truth and brave it out. He will be shocked, no 
doubt, at the idea of my p^iowling about Ijondon secretly 
after dark; but he can not^’efuse to forgive me when I tell 
him of the insurmountable impulse which took me to that 
fatal house. 

Cyril and I went to Ilurlingham this afternoon with 
mother, and saw a polo match, and then strolled about the 
lawn and looked at the river together, while mother sat on 
the terrace in front of the house talking to her friends. It 
seems to me sometimes as if all the women in London must 
be her friends, she is so beset wherever we go. The pub- 
lic life, the constant movement and perpetually changing 
faces do not suit me half so well as River Lawn and its 
placid insipidity. My books, my piano, an occasional 
single at tennis with Beatrice Reardon, my boat, my gar- 
den. Yes, I love Buckinghamshire, and I believe I hate 
London. 

The day was lovely, Ilurlingham was lovely, Cyril was 
full of the kindest attentions, and yet I was not hapjoy. 
Apart from my uncomfortable apprehensions about tiie 
man called Duverdier, I felt as if something had gone 
wrong in my life. An afternoon that would have been 
perfect bliss a few weeks ago — before we went to Paris, for 
instance — seemed flat, stale, and unprofitable. I looked 
at the river listlessly; I was not interested even in the 
gowns, some of which were extravagant enough to awaken 
the dead. 

“Hoes this remind you of the Adriatic?” Cyril asked 
me, as we stood side by side upon the lawn that slopes to 
the river. 

“ Hot the least little bit in the world. How can you 
comparVdhis dirty London river with that delicious blue 
sea? You must be dreaming.” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


223 


“lam clreamiijg/^ he answered. “ I am dreaming of 
the hour when you and 1 stood side by side with our feet 
in the long grass that grows close to the sea on Torcello. 

1 felt in just the wrong mood for sentiment. Every 
word he said jarred upon my nerves. 

“ That^s a very pretty speech, but 1 know you wish your- 
self among those horrid pigeon-shooters/’ I saidj flippantly, 
and fond as I am of pigeons 1 felt that I would willingly 
sacrifice a few just to get rid of my companion. 

He looked offended; and then my conscience reproached 
me, and I said something civil; and then wo walked up 
and down the lawn, and he talked as I suppose lovers do 
talk all the world over. It is not worth putting down in 
this midnight confidante of mine, as though sometimes I 
scribble whole conversations, just for the love of scribbling. 

Do all engaged girls get tired of i\\Q\v fianch, I w'onder? 
Is there always this feeling of weariness, this sense of the 
emptiness of life? Are all engagements as monotonous as 
mine? Cyril and 1 have been engaged less than four 
months, and yet I feel as if it were half a life-time. I feel 
as if it were absurd in him to be sentimental, or to say 
pretty things after such ages of courtship. 

Oh, 1 wish, I wish, I wish I loved him better; if it were 
only out of gratitude to Uncle Ambrose, who is so pleased 
at the idea of our union, who has told me again and again 
how happy it makes him to know that Cyril’s happiness is 
secured. 

Could I disappoint him? Could I be inconstant or 
capricious? Could I write myself dowui that worthless 
creature, a jilt, after all the father’s goodness to me and all 
the son’s affection? No, my fate is sealed. If the vows 
had been vowed at the altar I could hardly be more boinul 
than I am. Bound in honor! What bondage can be more 
irrevocable? 

Uncle Ambrose is so good to me; but I have reproaehed 
Eim l^ely with neglecting my education, which seems a 
/in^rdHhipg now when I am getting older, and, as I venture 
^ toUhink, worthier to be his pupil. I remember the pains 
he used to take with me, and the time he used to waste 
upon my exercises and compositions and resurnh before 1 
was in my teens; and now when I want his help he is gen- 
erally too much occupied to give it; or if he consents to 
spend 9,0 hour in my morning-room hearing me read Dante 


224 : 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


or Virgil, 1 can see that his mind is no longer in the work. 
He used to give me such delightful explanations and illus- 
trations over every page, so that to read a page of the iEneid 
or the “ Divine Comedy with him was as good as a lect- 
ure upon the classics or mediseval history. He used to 
throw himself into the work with all his heart, talking of 
that old Florentine world as if he had lived in it and been 
intimate with all the people; flinging himself into vexed 
questions of politics or social life as if the argument was a 
thing of to-day; as if Dante had but just left the city; as 
if Savonarola were still teaching and preaching; and then 
he used to take such interest in any little composition of 
mine, and would laugh so pleasantly at my ungrammatical 
construction, my bread-and-butter missishness. Now, 
when his life ought to be utterly happy, having won the 
wife of his heart, there is a cloud upon his spirits. He 
seems to have lost the old zest for the books he once loved. 

Can it be that in his heart of hearts he knows my motlier 
does not really love him — that she gave herself to him in 
the hope of making his life happy, of giving him some re- 
ward for years of . quiet devotion on his part? Can it be 
that he knows, as well as I know, that her heart is buried 
in her first husband's grave? 

This is the only solution 1 can imagine for that shadow 
of trouble which hangs over his life, which makes all com- 
mon pleasures a weariness to him, which makes him tire 
of everything, and turn restlessly from one frivolous 
amusement to another, as if in search of distraction rather 
than of happiness. 

I asked him the other day why he had been so eager to 
set up an establishment in London, and to jflungc into the 
gay world. 

“ I had two motives, Daisy," he said, with his grave, ex- 
planatory air, just like the Uncle Ambrose of my child- 
hood. “ The first was you! I thought it only right that 
in your dawn of womanhoood you should taste all the pleas- 
ures which are supposed to be delightful to your age and 
sex. I did not want you to look back, in the time to come, 
and say to yourself, my step-father cheated me out of the 
privileges of my position in life— he kept me mewed up in 
a country house when 1 ought to have been enjoying all 
the pleasures that society can offer to a rich man’s" daugh- 
ter and heiress. Had he been my own father he would 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND 't 


225 


have been more coiisiderutp. I did nofc want you-' to say 
that, Daisy, perhaps when I was dost. 

“ Do you think 1 could ever have been so unjust or so 
ungrateful?’^ 

“ It would have been only human to have regretted 
pleasures you had never known,” he answered. “ My sec- 
ondary motive was purely selfish. 1 never lived till I made 
your mother my wife. 1 wanted to drink deep of the cup 
of life. I wanted all the pleasures and gladness that life 
could give me, even its most frivolous pleasures. I wanted 
to see what the great world was like, to hear my wife ad- 
mired as a queen among women. I wanted to share the 
amusements which might interest her, to feel that our 
wedded life was one joyous holiday.” 

He broke off with a sigh. The word joy sounded pure 
mockery from those pale lips. 

“ Uncle Ambrose, 1 like you ever so much better as a 
scholar and a recluse than as a man of fashion,” I cried, 
in my impetuous way. 

Of course it was just one of those things I ought not to 
have said, and I began to apologize. 

“ I know how everybody admires you, and how anxious 
people are to see you,” 1 said. “ 1 hear them talking 
about you at parties, asking if you are really the Ambrose 
Arden who wrote ‘ Flesh or Spirit,’ and 1 hear them prais- 
ing your noble head, and your placid expression, and quiet, 
contemplative manner. You are distinguished from the 
herd in whatever society you may appear; but still — but 
still 1 like my uncle Ambrose of the Buckinghamshire 
lanes better than the gentleman with whom mother and I 
tread the mill-round of London parties.” 

“ You are right, Daisy, fashion is not my metirr. But 
I wanted to see what the gay world was like, and whether 
there was anything in the atmosphere of London drawing- 
rooms that could make a man forget that bundle of doubts, 
regrets, and disappointments which we call self. I find no 
Lethe in Mayfair or Belgravia, Daisy. Self goes about 
with me from square to street, and from street to square.” 

He rose with a troubled si^b and began to pace the room. 

“ You too talk of disappointments!” I cried, reproach- 
fully. “ What a bad compliment to mother.” 

“Daisy, you know as well as I do that to me your 
mother is simply the most adorable of women; and yet I 
8 


226 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


am disappointed, and yet I am disheartened; for I thought 
this butterhy life of ours would please her, and 1 don’t be- 
lieve it does.” 

“ You should have left her in the home she loves,” I an- 
swered. “ She was as happy there as she ever could be 
anywhere, after the sorrow that clouded her life forever. 
You can not expect such a cloud as that to pass away 
altogether. You can not expect her ever to be just the 
same as other women in whose lives there has been no trag- 
edy. You ought never to have brought her to live in Lon- 
don. Don’t you know that to her and to me this great gay 
London, with all its wealth, and brightness, and headlong 
hunt after pleasure, means only the city in which my father 
was murdered. We can nev^er forget that one fact. To 
us London must always be the most hateful place in the 
world.” 

I was carried away by my feelings, and said a good deal 
more than 1 meant to say. 

” Does she feel that?” he asked, stopping in his pacing 
up and down, and looking at me fixedly. 

“ I think she must,” I answered. “ I know I do.” 

“ We will go away in a week or two,” he said, hur- 
riedly. “ I will take you all to the lakes. It is just the 
season to enjoy those shadowy hills and cool waters.” 

” We don’t want the lakes. We want home, and our 
own gardens and our own river,” I said, angry at his car- 
ing for new places. ” That is the only change mother and 
I care about.” 

He sighed and was silent, and after a little more pacing 
to and fro he resumed his seat at my side, and took up 
Dante at the line where we had strayed away into conversa- 
tion. 

This talk occurred the day before my pilgrimage to Den- 
mark Street. 

That odious man had forced himself into my step-father’s 
presence, after ever so many repulses, and I am utterly 
mystified by his audacity and by my step-father’s reticence. 

Cyril and 1 were at the opera last night with mother. 
Mother had promised to show herself, if it were for only 
half an hour, at a reception at the Foreign Office, where 
she is likely to meet all the people she knows and does not 
care a straw about, So we dropped her in Whitehall;, 


WHOSE WAS THE HAHD ? 


227 


looking superb in a gray brocade, lighted up with sapphires 
and diamonds, and with her beautiful throat rising up out 
of a rutf of ostrich feathers; and then the carriage took 
us home, with instructions to go back for mother in half 
an hour. Uncle Ambrose had been complaining of head- 
ache all day, and was not well enough to go to either opera 
or party. 

The door was opened, and I was just going in when a 
man seemed to spring out of the darkness and push him- 
self in front of Cyril, who was following me, and almost 
leap into the house at my side. There were two men in 
the hall, but footmen are stupid, solemn creatures, trained 
to move slowly and to hold their chins in the air, and 
neither of those two powdered dolts had the sense to stop 
him. lie walked straight to Uncle Ambrose’s study, at 
the back of the hall, opened the door, and went in. I 
waited breathlessly, expecting to see him flung out into the 
hall again in the next moment; but he shut the door be- 
hind liim, and the door remained shut. Uiicle Ambrose 
was evidently giving him an interview. 

Cyril was furious. 

“ Do you know that fellow?” he asked the foofTmin. 

“ He have been here before, sir, arstiii’ for answers to 
his letters, three or four, or 1 should say as much as five or 
six times within the week,” one of the men stated solemn- 
ly, as if he had been in a witness-box. 

“ Do you know his name, or who and what he is?” 

“ I do not, sir, leastways, only that he’s a foreigner.” 

Cyril walked over to the door, opened it, and went in. I 
waited, with my heart beating violently, expecting to be 
called in and questioned about my adventure in Church 
Street. Cyril came back to the hall in a minute or two. 

“ My father seems to know the fellow, and wishes to 
hear his grievance, whatever it is,” he toid me, with a 
vexed air. “ 1 don’t like the look of the man, and I told 
my father how he had pushed past me and ruslud into the 
house. However, my father chooses to hear his story, and 
I can say nothing. Come up to the divan, Daisy; I don’t 
want to be out of hearing while that fellow is on the 
premises.” 

The divan is a little room on the half flight, fitted up in 
Mauresque style, and only divided from the landing by a 
partition, partly painted glass and partly carved sandal- 


22S 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


wood from Persia. Ifc is a capital nook for gossip or flirta- 
tion, and when we have a party the divan is always in great 
request. It is lighted by an Oriental lamp, which is in 
perfect harmony with the decoration, but which gives a 
very indifferent light. 

Cyril ordered strawberries and lemonade to be sent up 
to this retreat, and we sat there for half an hour pretend- 
ing to talk about the opera, but both of us obviously pre- 
occupied and uncomfortable, and both of us listening for 
the opening of the study door below. I know we talked in 
hushed voices, and never withdrew our attention from what 
was going on down-stairs. We could see the hall door 
through the open door of the divan, at the end of the vista 
beyond the shallow flight of stairs. 

“ I hate mysteries,^’ Cyril said at last, in the midst of a 
languid debate about the merits and demerits of the new 
tenor. 

I got up and Cyril and 1 went on to the landing, and 
stood there looking over the balustrade into the hall until 
the door opened, and his father’s voice called to the foot- 
man, “ See that person out,” whereupon the man opened 
the great hall door, and the midnight visitor went out just 
a minute or so before the carriage stopped, and mother 
alighted. 

She came into the hall in her long white cloak with its 
downy ostrich trimming, such a lovely, gracious figure, the 
gems in her rich brown hair flashing in the lamp-light. 
IJncle Ambrose came out of his den to receive her. 

“Were you amused, dearest?” he asked. “Was it a 
pleasant party?” 

“ It was a brilliant one, at any rate,” she answered. “ I 
met all the people we know, and a few stars and foreign 
orders that I don’t know, flow white you look, Ambrose. 
You ought not to be up so late. What was the use of 
staying away from the opera and the reception only to tire 
yourself at home?” 

“ I have not been tiring myself, except with a dull book 
by a clever man. What pains some clever men take to be 
dull, by the way. I have been resting as much as 1 can 
rest, dear. 1 am past that golden age when sleep comes 
at will.” 

“But you had a late visitor. Who was the man who 
went out of the house just before 1 arrived?” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


229 

“ An old acquaintance — that is to say, a bookbinder who 
worked for me years ago, who has the common ’complaint 
of old acquaintances — impecuniousness. 

“ And you helped him, of course?’^ 

“ I heard his story, and have promised to consider it.^^ 

“ But if he is in immediate want — 

“ My dearest, I have no opinion of the man’s character, 
and 1 am doubtful whether I ought to believe his story. 
He forced an entrance into this house in an uuvvarranlable 
manner, and it would have served him right had 1 sent for 
a policeiuan and given him in charge. However, he pleads 
sore distress as an excuse for his audacity, and I let him 
tell me his story. I shall do nothing for him unless I get 
some confirmation of it from a respectable quarter.” 

Cyril and I were leaning over the balustrade straining 
our ears to listen. 

A bookbinder; that impertinent wretch is a bookbinder. 
And what a tissue of falsehoods his story of distress must 
be when 1 saw him reeling out of a restaurant with his 
booh companions less than a week ago. 

I suppose the wretch has said nothing about his meeting 
with me. He may not have associated the name of Hatrell 
with his old employer, Mr. Arden; and yet a man of that 
kind, hanging about the house as he has done, would be 
likely to find out all about ns. He passed close to me as 
he pushed his way into the hall; but it is just possible he 
did not recognize me in my very different style of dress. 

There was nothing in riiy step-father’s manner to indi- 
cate agitation or irritation of any kind. 1 never heard his 
melodious voice calmer or his accents more measured than 
when he exjfiained the midnight visit to my mother in the 
hall. 

“ The mountain has brought forth a mouse,” said Cyril, 
gayly. 

Mother came upstairs in the next minute, so I wished 
Cyril good-night and went up to her dressing-room with 
her to hear all about the party, while her maid took off 
her jewels and finery. 

My Wth — We are at home once more in the dear old 
rooms and in the lovely old garden, and I feel almost as if 
my sixteenth birthday were still a grand event in the fut- 
in-e-— feel almost as young as 1 felt in the old childish days 
before mother’s marriage, and our Italian travels, and our 


2S0 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


Loudon gayeLes, and all the experiences that have made 
me a woman of the world. I feel almost as I felt at six- 
teen, almost, but not quite, as happy as I felt then. There 
is no use in keeping a diary unless one is sternly truthful, 
and stern truth compels me to acknowledge to this book 
Uiat I am not so happy as I was before mother’s marriage 
and my own engagement to Cyril. 

In those old days I was as free as air — free to think and 
to dream, and to shape the many-colored visions of my fut- 
ure life out of those idle dreams. Now my future is all 
mapped out for me, and my life has a master who will 
dictate all things, lie is good, he is devoted, he is all that 
a fiance should be, but still he is my master. There can 
be no doubt of that. My duty as his plighted wife in- 
volves cdnfideuce and obedience. I am bound to confide in 
him; I am bound to obey him. 

Oh, 1 wish, I wish I loved him better. I wish 1 could 
feel as mother did when she was nineteen years of age, aiid 
engaged to my father. She has talked to me often of her 
thoughts and feelings at that time — how it seemed to her 
as if all this life of ours, and all this world we live in, be- 
gan and ended in Robert Hatrell. 

I have never felt like that, never, never, never. 

What a perverse wretch I must be! How persistently all 
my thoughts and fancies drift into the wrong channel. 
Only this morning, walking alone on the terrace, where I 
made tea for Mr. Florestan, the fancy flashed into my mind 
that on that particular afternoon I was happier than I had 
ever been in my life. 

What an idle notion, as idle and capricious as any of the 
fancies of my childhood when I used to give myself up to 
day-dreams, and lie upon the newly cut grass in haymaking 
time and dream of all the people I loved most in history, 
and dream that I was walking iji the woods beyond Lam- 
ford with Charles the First and Henrietta Maria, and that 
I was appointed somehow to come between him and his 
enemies, yes, to save him from the scaffold, to help him in 
his escape, like Flora MacDonald with the young Pretender. 
Charles Edward was not romantic enough for me. Alas! 
I knew that he got fat and took to drinking in his old age. 
History is so brutal. Charles the First was my hero. ° I 
forgot all his shiftiness and double-dealing, his selfish sense 
of his own importance, his cowardly abandonment of Straf- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


231 


ford. I forgot ev^ery thing except that his head was very 
beautiful, as Vandyke painted it, and that Bradshaw and 
his crew cut it off. 

Foolish, foolish Alice-in-Wonderland fancies! Every girl 
of eleven or twelve has her Wonderland, and if she has 
been crammed with history it is not of birds and beasts that 
she dreams, but of Joan of Arc, and her martyrdom at 
Rouen; or of Henry, the first Bourbon king, murdered in 
the quaint old streets of mediaeval Paris; or of Mary of 
Scotland; or Marie Antoinette, and the young dauphin, 
who suffered the most cruel reverse of fortune that ever 
prince endured, and who died mysteriously, done to death 
in the wicked old prison. 

My earliest dreams were of heroes and martyrs, my 
chosen favorites in the world of the dim romantic past. 
Then came more selfish day-dreams, visions of the life that 
I was to lead and the wonderful things I was to do when I 
grew up. When I grew up! Oh, phrase of marvelous 
meaning! Wealth, wisdom, power unlimited were to come 
to me as a matter of course — when 1 had grown up. I 
was to be very beautiful. Lovelier than any one else. 
There would be no good in a commonplace every-day 
beauty. I must be beautiful exceedingly, an advantage 
which would not be without its drawbacks, as T should 
have on an average to reject a suitor a day. Beauty has 
its duties as well as its rights, the duty of crushing pre- 
sumptuous pretenders to its favor. 

Silly, silly dreams! 1 am blushing, dear diary, at the 
mere recollection of my absurdity; but I am happy to say 
ihis kind of day-dream only lasted as long as the novelty 
of being in my teens, and the first keen delight of wearing 
a gold watch which mother gave me on my thirteenth 
birthday. 

Later dreams were of philanthropic revolutions. I was 
to be the guardian angel of a great district in the poorest 
part of London. I saw myself walking in streets and alleys 
where the police hardly dared to enter. I saw myself visit- 
ing the hospitals, carrying good tidings to the dying. My 
heart swelled at the thought of the good I would do when 
1 grew up, if mother would let me do just as I liked, and 
spend my money how I liked. 

Some foolish chattering maid-servant had told me that I 


232 


WHOSE WAS THE HAKD ? 


should be rich, that I should have my own independent 
fortune when I grew up. 

There were other visions that indicate a substratum of 
inordinate vanity under all my girlish shyness. 

1 could not take up an art without dreaming that I was 
goiug to excel in it. If 1 got on fairly well with my prac- 
tice of the Pastorale or the Pathetique I fancied that I was 
going to work on until 1 became a second Schumann or 
Essipoff. If I just managed to paint a little water-colored 
sketch of the river or the village — the gable end of a cot- 
tage and a bit of garden — a backwater under the willows — 
1 saw before my eager footsteps a long, bright road leading 
to a dazzling temple, where Fame sat ready with garlands 
and trumpets and gold medals, ready to pronounce me 
second only to Millais for figure and landscape. 

Idle, idle dreams. They have all fled long ago — fled 
into the limbo of all childish things — gone to the great 
rubbish heap where some of my dearest dolls are rotting. 
1 hope and believe that I am cured of silly vanities, and 
that I am a fairly sensible young woman, quite aware of 
the difference of my dream nose — a perfect Grecian — and 
my real nose, a very tolerable retrousse — quite aware that 
a complexion powdered with freckles every summer can 
hardly be considered alabaster — my dream-self had a dis- 
tinctly alabaster complexion. In a word, I am aware of all 
my shortcomings, mental and physical, and am reconciled 
to them. All I ask in life is to live always with, or very 
near, mother, to be happy, and the cause of happiness iii 
others. 

Is that too much to ask, I wonder, in a world so full of 
suffering? I fear it is. If one had newly alighted upon 
this earth in some tropical valley, or by some Italian lake, 
one would suppose it a world made only for bliss. Who 
would suspect earthquakes, or disastrous tempests, floods, 
disease and famine, poisonous serpents and savage tigers, 
upon so fair a planet? 'Who would ever guess, new to the 
scene, that the majority of mankind are full of trouble, as 
the sparks fly upward? 

No, there was never a more idle thought than that of 
mine which dwelt so obstinately upon the one half hour I 
spent with Mr. Florestan tete-a-tete upon the terrace. I 
douT believe it was more than twenty minutes. I know I 
made myself excessively disagreeable in order that he 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? S33 

should not stay too long. I was seized with an attack of 
prudishness. Pm afraid; for after all it could not have been 
very bad manners to give a visitor a cup of tea in my moth- 
er’s absence. 

Fountainhead is empty now. I hear the plashing of the 
fountain when I walk in the shrubbery that joins his shrub- 
bery. The trees were planted the autumn after my father’s 
death, when mother was just well enough to be wheeled 
about in her bath-chair to watch the planting. I can see 
her face now as it looked then, pale as marble, and with- 
out a smile. The trees have grown ever so big, chestnuts 
red and white, acacias, mountain-ash and copper beech, 
conifers of every kind, tremulous birches, silvery white in 
sunshine or moonlight. It is a delightful shrubbery, 
arranged in careless-seeming curves, and with labyrinthian 
paths, and here and there a rustic bench, and in one deep 
wooded nook a rustic summer-house. 

At a season like this, when the glare on the terrace is 
almost too much to be endured, even by a sun- worshiper 
like me, I bring my books and my work to this summer- 
house — I am writing in it now — and the dogs find me, and 
we make ourselves at home here, aloof from all the world. 

There is no sound but the plash of Mr. Florestan’s fount- 
ain, and the song of the thrushes which revel in this shrub- 
bery. The nightingales are gone already. How soon the 
glory of summer dwindles away. 

It must be horribly warm in Paris at this season, and I 
read in the papers that the city is given over to the sum- 
mer tourists. Yet I suppose Mr. Florestan prefers Paris 
to Buckinghamshire. 

In all probability he has gone off with the rest of the 
great world, and is taking the waters at Vichy or Royat, 
or away in that wonderful mountain region in the Pyre- 
nees, where healing and beauty go hand in hand. 

Wherever he maybe I am glad we are here. Uncle Am- 
brose pleaded hard for the English lakes. He had all but 
taken a house at Grasmere; but mother and I both wanted 
to come home, and we are home, and we ought to be 
happy. 

I wish Uncle Ambrose were happier; it grieves me to see 
that the desire of his heart has not brought him happiness. 
Mother is so attentive to him, so full of tenderness and 
forethought; but I know — I know it is not love that she 


234 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


gives him, and his heart hungers for love. I pity them 
both. Yes; it is just that — the one thing wanting. It is 
the little rift within the lute. 

Oh, diary of mine! it is an evil thing to marry without 
love. The more I think of mother and her second hus- 
band, and the more 1 think of Cyril and myself, the more 
I feel that it is an evil thing. It is unmitigated evil to 
marry a man to whom one can not give one’s whole hearL 

I pray God every morning and every night that 1 may 
grow fonder of Cyril — that 1 may learn to adore him be- 
tween now and our wedding-day. An engaged girl once 
told me that she did not care a straw for \\qi' fiance when 
she accepted him. She only thought that it would be nice 
to be married and have a house of her own, and she had 
visions of her trousseau, and her mother had promised to 
give her half her diamonds when she married — all sorts of 
selfish considerations — but by the time she had been en- 
gaged to him three months she felt that she could beg her 
bread barefoot through the world with him. That was her 
way of putting it. 

Cyril is clever, generous-minded, good-looking. He is 
a fine tennis player; he sculls splendidly. A girl ought to 
find it easy to adore him. What can I want in a lover if I 
am not satisfied with him? Do I expect to marry a demi- 
god? 


CHAPTER XIX. 

daisy’s diary. 

When 1 was a child, and even last summer, I used to 
think a J uly day could not be too long, provided, of course, 
that J uly behaved as J uly, and one could bask in the sun- 
shine on the lawn or on the river, and cool one’s self in the 
shade of willows in mysterious backwaters, where the sedges 
are full of bloom and the lilies lie in a tangle of loveliness, 
lifting their milk-white chalices to the warm blue sky. 
This year I find I am growing old, and that we can have 
too much eveti of July — a monotony of loveliness that preys 
upon one’s spirits, a perpetual sunshine that irritates one’s 
nerves. 

I have only lately discovered what it is to have nerves; 
and since I made that discovery I seem to have nothing 
but nerves. Mother asked me yesterday what had become 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


235 


>• 


of my sweet temper. She hardly recognized her daughter 
of a year ago in the fretful young person of to-day. Was 
I ever sweet-tempered? I asked myself, wonderingly. 1 
know I am very unamiable now. 1 was siiappishh to my 
dear old Broomfield this very morning. I snatched my 
white frock out of her hand while she stood shilly-shally- 
ing and prosing about it in her dear old rambling way, de- 
bating whether it was or was not fresh enough for me to 
wear. 

“ What does it matter?’^ 1 cried, impatiently. “ There 
is nobody to see my frock. 

“ Nobody, Miss Daisy, when Mr. Cyril is marching up 
and down by the boat-house at this very moment waiting 
for you?’^ 

“ Cyril is nobody; defiance doesn’t count,” said I. 

“ Don’t he, miss? It was different in my time. A 
young woman always took pains with herself when she had 
some one to walk out with.” 

“And you used to walk out with all sorts of people, I 
believe, you dear old flirt,” said I, for one of my earliest 
memories is of Broomfield’s long stories about soldiers and 
shop-boys who paraded the London parks with her in her 
previous services. 

“ I always had admirers. Miss Daisy, but I knew how to 
keep them at arm’s-length,” she answered, with dignity. 
“ A young person in service in London must have a re- 
spectable young man to walk out with, or she would never 
get a breath of fresh air.” 

“ Oh, you cruel Broomfield, to think of the shoe-leather 
your victims must have worn out, you meaning nothing all 
the time.” 

“ Lor’, miss, they’re used to it, and it only serves them 
right,” said Broomfield. “ They’re all as artful as they’re 
high, and they’ve always an eye to a young woman’s Post 
Office Savings Bank book.” 

I encouraged the dear old thing to prattle in this fashion 
while she fastened my white cambric frock, and I forgot 
poor Cyril, who had been loafing about for the last hour 
waiting for me. I am afraid I am getting tired of the 
Thames. I am afraid I am developing a horrid, inconsist- 
ent, capricious character. How odd it is that one may go 
on adoring a place for years, and then weary of it sudden- 
ly, in one week of blazing J uly weather. 


236 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


I hope it is only a temporary weariness, caused by that 
very hot weather. 

Fountainhead shows its usual dismal aspect of closed shut- 
ters and blinds drawn down. Mr. Florestan came in a 
meteor-like manner at the beginning of last week, and took 
tea with mother on Tuesday afternoon while I was miles 
and miles up the river with Cyril, yawning myself to death 
over a silly novel, while he threw his fly for trout, and 
seemed to do nothing but entangle his line in the willows. 
When I went down to dinner that evening mother in- 
formed me that Mr. Florestan had done me the honor to 
inquire about my health — as if I were ever ill! — and, 
furthermore, that he was to leave Fountainhead early next 
morning on his way to Scotland, where he was to spend 
the whole of August and September. 

I felt inclined to hate Scotland. 

“ How will Paris get on without him? I’m afraid 
thereTl be a revolution, or at least an emeute,” I remarked, 
flippantly. 

I have noticed in myself lately that when I feel as if my 
heart were made of lead 1 am always inclined to be flip- 
pant. 

Why should my heart be heavy? Why, oh, why? Cyril 
is so frank, so clever in his own bright, boyish way, so alto- 
gether what a young man ought to be; and yet I am not 
satisfied; there is a terrible sense of failure and a life gone 
wrong always gnawing at my heart. Mother began to talk 
to me yesterday about my trousseaUy but I begged her not 
to mention the odious thing for ages. My drawers and 
armoires and hanging-closets are stuffed with clothes of all 
kinds, and how can I want more? True, 1 never seem 
to have the right kind of gown to wear for any given occa- 
sion; but I believe that is a peculiarity of all wardrobes, 
and I dare say if I had the most magnificjent trousseau I 
should find before my honey-moon was over that I must 
refuse really tempting invitations for want of appro|)riate 
raiment. 

All this is idle beating about the bush of my discontent. 
1 am engaged to be married, and I shrink with actual 
aversion from the mere thought of the future life I have 
pledged myself to lead. I like my lover with a very cor- 
dial liking, and 1 am happy and at ease in his company so 
long as he does not remind me that he is my lover, and 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


237 


that he expects very soon to be my husband. When he 
does remind me of that odious fact I almost hate him; just 
as I hate the July weather, and the river, and the gardens, 
and myself most of all. 

Oh, it is such a dreadful thing to know one^s self beloved 
by a good and true heart like Cyril’s and not to be able to 
give one’s whole heart in return. If it were not for this 
good old stupid diary, I believe I should go out of my 
mind. It eases my heart a little to scribble about my 
thoughts and feelings. 1 could not talk even to my dear 
mother as I can talk to this book. 

I wonder Mr. Florestan did not stay one day longer at 
Fountainhead, just to see us all again, and to tell us the 
latest news of Paris. 

Poor mother has anxieties of her own, and it would be 
cruel to plague her with mine, even if I could bring myself 
to talk about my trouble, which I am sure I could not. 
She is very anxious about Uncle Ambrose, and I don’t 
wonder. He is in very bad health, and I fear that his 
mental health is in question, and that seems more hopeless 
and more full of alarm for the future than any bodily ail- 
ment. 

He came back to Eiver Lawn reluctantly; and I have 
seen him change for the worse day by day since we came 
here. He spends all his studious hours in the old cottage, 
sitting in the library where he has all his choiciest books, 
and where he did so much good work in past years. But 
even in his studious hours he is restless, and comes back to 
this house every now and then in a capricious, purposeless 
way, just to say a few words to mother, or to wander about 
the garden for a few minutes, and to stand looking dreamily 
at the river, as if he had had some reason for leaving his 
books and coming across the road, and had forgotten it on 
the way. 

He will not admit that he is ill, nor will he consent to 
consult a physician, though mother has urged him to see 
any one of the great men in whom everybody believes. He 
declares that he has never in his life consulted a doctor on 
his own account, and that he is too old to begin. 

“ I remember a sleek, white-haired gentleman with 
gold-rimmed spectacles, who felt my pulse and looked at 
my tongue every day for a fortnight, when I had the 
measles,” he said, “and who dosed me with nauseous 


238 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


medicine three times a day, and with nightly powders. He 
gave me a poor opinion of the faculty which I have never 
been able to outlive. ’’ 

It is all very well for him to make light of his ailments 
and to refuse all advice, but I know he is ill, and very ill. 
He has a nervous irritability at times which makes him 
altogether unlike the Uncle Ambrose of old; and something 
happened the other day which makes me fear that his 
nerves are in a worse condition than even mother suspects, 
anxious though she is about him. 

I was dawdling in the hall after playing tennis all the 
morning with Cyril, who really is quite the finest player 1 
know. I was examining my racket before I put it in the 
stand, and was almost hidden by one of the oak pillars, 
which stood between me and library door. 

The garden door opened while I was standing there and 
Uncle Ambrose came into the hall, looking white and 
weary, as he so often looks now. He opened the door of 
my father^s old study, expecting to find my mother there. 

“ Clara, he said, as he opened the door. 

She was not there, and the room was empty. He stood 
upon the threshold motionless for some moments — for some 
minutes it seemed to me as I watched him standing there, 
rigid as a stone figure, staring into the empty room — then 
he gave a groan of agony, staggered back into the hall, 
and sunk into a chair, and sat there languid almost to 
fainting, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. I 
could see his hand tremble as he drew his handkerchief 
out of his coat pocket. 

I came from behind the pillar and ran to him. He gave 
a cry at sight of me just as if I had been a ghost. I 
offered to get him some brandy, but he said there was no 
occasion. He had only suffered from a sudden faintness, 
which had come over him as he opened the library door. 

“Don’t tell your mother,” he said, “it would only 
alarm her causelessly.” 

“ But she ought to know,” I told him. “ Indeed, in- 
deed, indeed. Uncle Ambrose, you must consult some 
clever physician — you must not go on any longer like 
this. ” 

“ Well, child, I will consult a physician, if my submis- 
sion upon that point will make you and your mother any 
happier; although I can tell you beforehand that no doctor 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


239 


in London — not the whole College of Physicians — can do 
any good for me. The evil I suffer from is purely nervous, 
and no doctor has yet fathomed the mystery of the nerves 
any more than any theologian has fathomed the mystery of 
the worlds that lie behind this life or in front of it. 

I took his hand in mine and found it as cold as ice, and 
the perspiration kept starting out afresh upon his forehead. 
His whole being seemed convulsed and shattered. I had 
heard of catalepsy, and I could but think that he was in a 
cataleptic state during those minutes in which he stood on 
the threshold of the library. 

“ If you will promise to go up to London to-morrow 
with mother to see a doctor 1 will not tell her anything 
about this attack to-day, I said; “but if you refuse I 
must tell her.’’ 

“ Haven’t I said that 1 will do anything to please you 
and your mother, Daisy 

He kept his word, and mother and he went off to Cav- 
endish Square, and my cousins from Harley Street came 
down for a long day at tennis. I can only say that it was 
a long day. The interval between lunch and tea was a 
Pacific Ocean of time. 1 thought the blessed break of 
afternoon tea would never come; but the tea-kettle ap- 
peared at last, and mother and her husband came home 
soon after. 

She knew 1 was almost as anxious as herself, and she 
told me all the doctor had said. It did not seem to amount 
to much, but no doubt it was comforting. All the wisdom 
of Cavendish Square might be summed up under three 
heads — a judicious diet, as per half page of note-paper 
filled with the great man’s writing — less intellectual work 
— and bromide of potassium. The diet w^as the most im- 
portant point, according to the physician, and I suppose 
he was right, and that an injudicious helping of Aylesbury 
duck may have been the cause of that strange seizure at 
the door of my father’s old den. 

Cyril took his father’s illness rather lightly. I told him 
of the attack, though I said not one word about it to 
mother. 

“ My father is pa 3 fing the penalty of having no fixed pur- 
pose or pursuit in life; he is suffering from too much 
money aud too much metaphysics. He has a brain capa- 


240 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


ble of better work than he has ever done, and he is begin- 
ning to suffer from wasted energies/^ 

“ But he has written books that have made their mark 
in the most intellectual circles, said 1. 

“ Yes, and therefore books that the British public don’t 
care twopence about — books that interrogate everything 
and solve nothing — books that leave us not one hair’s- 
breadth further advanced toward the comprehension of the 
three great mysteries of matter, life, and mind than Aris- 
totle and Plato left us three hundred and fifty years before 
the birth of Christ.” 

“ Some of the reviews said that your father’s book 
marked a new era in philosophy,” said 1. 

“ My dear Daisy, philosophy is like the sea. The waves 
rise and fall, and change their forms every hour; but the 
shore is always at exactly the same distance from mid- 
ocean.” 

I felt that it seemed hard upon Uncle Ambrose that the 
son should make so light of the labors of the father’s life- 
time. 

Oh, I am wicked, desperately wicked, steeped to the lips 
in falsehood and dishonor. I ought never to have listened; 
I ought to have silenced him in the first moment as 1 
silenced him at last. He is too honorable a man to have 
insisted upon speaking had I been firm. But the crisis of 
my life came upon me suddenly. Those impassioned words 
took me unawares, and I longed so to hear all he had to 
say. I wanted so much to know the secret of his heart, 
though that heart could never be mine. ' 

Gilbert Florestan had not gone to Scotland, after all. 
When 1 awoke yesterday morning, I thought of him far 
away in Argyleshire. I picture the barren heathery hills, 
russet and palest green under the baking July sky, as 
Flora and Dora — who go everywhere — have often described 
them to me; and I thought how much nicer those wild hills 
above the Kyles of Bute must be than our pretty little toy- 
shop river with its willowy eyots, which look as if one could 
hold them in the hollow of one’s hand. 

I felt such a longing for Scotland yesterday morning, 
almost as if 1 were homesick for a country I had never 
seen. I began to think I must have a Scottish ancestor 
hidden in some corner of the family tree. All our fancies 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


241 


and vagaries are put down to heredity nowadays, and cer- 
tainly yesterday morning I felt Scotch blood seething and 
bubbling in my veins. 

But he was not in Scotland. Mother had misunderstood 
him about the date of his journey, or else he had changed 
his mind. At any rate he had only gone to London to see 
about guns and fishing-tackle for the autumn; and there 
he was yesterday morning at eleven o’clock coming sud- 
denly between me and the light, as 1 sat reading alone in 
the summer-house in the shrubbery. 

Cyril had left us by an early train for a two days’ visit 
to a manor house near Guildford, in religious observance 
of one of those college friendships which young men es- 
teem so highly. His friend had telegraphed to him 
urgently, “ Come,” and he went; having carefully ascer- 
tained first that I did not mind. How I wish I had mind- 
ed more. 

1 felt a sense of relief when I saw him drive away from 
the gate, and yet I was dull without him. 1 missed his 
cheerful society, which generally makes thought impossi- 
ble, and 1 sat thinking deeply in the stillness of the shrub- 
bery, where there were no birds singing any more it seemed. 
I had books, work, a little sketch-block, and color-box, 
ample means for employment or amusement; and 3 ^et 1 sat 
idly thinking, idly dreaming, and picturing a life that was 
not the life I had pledged myself to lead. 

In the midst of these vain and foolish dreams he whose 
image had mixed itself with all of them stood suddenly be- 
fore me. I looked up and saw him standing there mute 
and serious. My guilty conscience sent the blood up to 
my face in a great wave of crimson. 1 could not speak, 
nor I think could he just at first. 

“ 1 thought you were in Scotland,” I said at last, and I 
really felt as if it was a brilliant remark. 

He explained, and, the sound of our voices having made 
us both just a little more at our ease, he sat down in the 
only empty chair, and took up my books one by one and 
looked at their titles. 

“ How learned you are,” he said. “ Cousin, Spinosa, 
Eeid; 1 did not think that little girls troubled their curly 
heads about philosophy.” 

“ I am not a little girl,” I answered, huffed at this im- 
pertinence, “ and philosophy is my uncle Ambrose’s favor- 


242 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


ite subject. He taught me all I know, and I like to read 
the subjects that interest him.^' 

“ Have you read much this morning?’^ he asked, look- 
ing me straight in the face, with a cruelly deliberate 
scrutiny. 

Again the hot blood rushed up to cheeks and brow, and 
I felt that he must know by my wretched blushes that I 
had not read a word; that I had just given over my heart 
and my mind to utterly foolish thoughts of him; profitless 
thoughts of what might have been if I had not engaged 
myself to Cyril that day at Torcello, and if he, Gilbert 
Florestan, had happened to care just a little for me. 
Could any day-dreams be wilder or more unbecoming a 
girl with the slightest notion of self-respect? I felt that I 
had degraded myself to my own folly, and that I was hardly 
worthy to live. 

“ Have you read much this morning?’^ he asked again, 
provokingly persistent. 

“ Not very much.^^ 

“ If you were like me you would not have read half a 
dozen consecutive lines. I have not been able to read 
properly for many weeks. An image comes dancing along 
the printed lines and dazzles me; like that spectrum of the 
sun we see upon the page of a book after we have looked at 
the sun himself. 1 have been no good for intellectual work 
for ever so long. Miss Hatrell.^^ 

It was a relief when he called me Miss Hatred, for I had 
been trembling lest he should call me Daisy. It was a re- 
lief to find him properly ceremonious; but I did not know 
how brief the respite was to be, and how soon he was going 
to shatter the citadel of my self-respect. 

He looked at all the books again, rearranged them 
methodically on the table, took up my sketch-block and 
looked critically at the half-finished sketch of a group of 
sycamores by the bend in the opposite shore. I don^t sup- 
pose he recognized them, though he must have known the 
originals from his boyhood. 1 took my little bit of em- 
broidery out of my basket. It was one of my numerous 
beginnings in a new style of work, which don^t often go 
beyond the preliminary stage. I threaded my needle care- 
fully with silk of the wrong color, and began a bit of a 
scroll. Every stitch had to come out when I took up my 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? ^43 

work again this morning. I don^t seem to have known 
what color 1 was using. 

“ Miss Hatreil/’ he said at last, “ when is this marriasre 
tobe?’^ 

1 concluded that he must mean my marriage, though he 
put his question rather vaguely. 

“ I don’t know. There is no date fixed yet. Not for 
ages, perhaps.” 

“ Ages in a young lady’s vocabulary generally mean 
weeks. There is no date fixed? But the marriage is fixed, 
I suppose. There is no doubt as to that?” 

“No,” 1 answered, resolutely. “ There is no doubt; 
there never has been any doubt; there is no room for 
doubt. ” 

“You have never felt the slightest inclination to with- 
draw your promise. Such things have been done, you 
know, and all in honor. Better to discover now than later 
that your hea t is not wholly giv n to your fiance ; better 
for you, happier for him. It is not an honorable act to 
marry a man you do not love, only because you have prom- 
ised rashly.” 

“ 1 have promised, and I mean to keep my word,” I an- 
swered, still resolute; and now the crimson flush, the fiery 
heat of that fierce shame had cooled, and I could feel from 
the faint sickness of my sinking heart that 1 must have 
turned deathly pale. “ I have many reasons for being true 
to my promise which you can not know, motives of grati- 
tude, motives of affection. I am not romantically in love 
with my fiancL I don’t think there are many romantic 
marriages in our day. Girls have grown more sensible. 
They no longer take their ideas of life from Byron and 
Moore.” 

I knew that 1 was rattling on in a most ridiculous way; 
but I felt constrained to talk. It was my only means of 
hiding my confusion, a kind of cuttle-fish vivacity, by 
which I hoped to hide my thoughts in a cloud of words. 

Mr. Florestan leaned his arms upon the table where my 
books and work were scattered, and watched my face 
earnestly while I spoke, as if he was reading the thoughts 
behind all my foolish babble. 

“ You are not romantically in love with your futur,^’ 
he repeated, slowly, “ but you have promised to be his wife, 
and you mean to keep his promise. You are perfectly 


244 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


contented with your lot. I think that is the gist of what 
you have just said to me, Miss Hatrell. That is what you 
mean.^^ 

“ Yes,'^ I answered, stiffly, “ that is what I niean.’^ 

“ Then 1 can only ask you to pardon my impertinent 
questioning, and wish you good-bye,’^ he said, rising slow- 
ly, and taking his hat, which he had put upon the bench 
beside him. “ I shall go to Scotland to-night.'^ 

He held out his hand and I gave him mine without a 
word. I wonder whi(;h was the colder. I thought of Mrs. 
Browning’s simile of the stone in the brook. 

Ah! if my hand could have lain in the hollow of his com- 
fortably, as bis possession, with what wild happiness this 
heart would have beaten. 

We parted so, with a most admirable gravity. Sir 
Charles Grandison and Miss Byron could not have behaved 
any better in a similar situation. And then, all at once, 
as 1 heard his footstep grinding the gravel, Satan got hold 
of me, and I ran after him. I did more than run. I flew. 
He was walking very fast, and I only caught him within a 
few paces of the gate which opens out of the shrubbery 
into the road close to his own domain. 

“ Mr. Florestan,” 1 gasped, too breathless to say more. 

He turned and faced me, still with that Grandisonian 
gravity. 

“ I hope you are not angry with me,” 1 said, inanely. 

“ Angry! What right have 1 to be angry?” returned 
he. “I ventured, perhaps overboldly, to ask a question. 
You have answered it frankly, and there it ends. What- 
ever hope led me to you this morning is a hope that has 
vanished. Nothing less than the knowledge ihat you are 
unhappy in your engagement to Mr. Arden would justify 
me in telling you what I might tell if honor would allow. 
Oh, Daisy, Daisy,” he cried, clasping my hands, and chang- 
ing in one instant from Sir Charles Grandison to the most 
animated and impassioned of men, “ why do you tempt me 
to say what were better unsaid — if — if you have really 
made up your mind. Don’t trifle with me"; don’t fool me. 
Oh, I think 1 understand you. I know what women are, 
even the best of them. You are going to marry Cyril 
Arden, but you would like, just for sport, to know how 
hard hit 1 am. Very hard hit, Dais 3 ^ The arrow has gone 
home to its mark, and it is a poisoned dart that will leave 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


245 


its veiiom in the wound for many and many a year. Is it 
not a pleasure, my sweet one, to know that in making one 
man happy you will make another man miserable?’’ 

“ No, it is not a pleasure; and 1 am utterly wretched,” 
I said; and as the tears were rolling down my cheeks he 
could not help believing me. 

He took me in his arms, and held me to his heart, and 
kissed my forehead and my hair — kissed me, Cyril’s prom- 
ised wife — and I let him, out of sheer misery. I was too 
completely broken down with woe to make a good fight for 
honor. 

“ Dear love, break this foolish engagement; scatter your 
precipitate vows to the winds. It will be better for every- 
body — for Arden, whom you don’t care about, for me who 
adore you, and even for your sweet, sweet self, whose heart 
beats throb for throb with mine — like the rival engines 
which will be racing to Scotland through the summer 
night, one of them carrying me away from you!” 

I had recovered my senses this time, and wrenched my- 
self from his arms. 

“ How cruel of you to take such advantage of my help- 
lessness,” I said, trying to smooth down the fluffy curls 
upon my poor ill-used forehead. “ Sir Charles wouldn’t 
have done such a thing.” 

“ Sir Charles!” he echoed, doubtless thinking me mad. 

“ I am very sorry that I was so foolish as to follow you,” 
I said. “ There was really no reason for my doing such an 
absurd thing. Only I wished to part friends.” 

“ That means you are obdurate to both your victims. 
You will marry Arden— not caring a straw for him — and 
you will break my heart, caring perhaps Just a little more 
than a straw for me.” 

“You are very impertinent for making such a sugges- 
tion,” 1 said, with all the hauteur I could summon to my 
voice and countenance, and it is very difficult for a girl of 
my disposition to summon any. 

The fairy who ought to have supplied me with feminine 
dignity and proper self-respect must certainty have taken 
offense at my christening, for I feel myself lamentably 
deficient in those qualities, and I really think the want of 
them is worse than a spindle through one’s hand. Worse 
than a spindle. W orse than an after-dinner nap of a cent- 
ury. What if I were to sleep for a hundred years and 


246 


WTTOSH WAS THl? HAND ? 


Gilbert Florestan were to wake me, “ in that new world 
which is the old’/^ 

Ah, why have we no fairies now? Why has life no sweet 
surprises? Why has everything in my life gone wrong? 

He did not notice my reproach. 

“ Is there no hope, Daisy ?’^ he asked, pronouncing my 
name as if he had ne^er been accustomed to address me by 
any other. 

“ I have told you that I mean to be true to my prom- 
ise,^’ I said. “I am ashamed of myself for having given 
you the idea that 1 could possibly waver. Good-bye, once 
more, and a pleasant journey to Argyleshire.^^ 

1 did not offer to shake hands with him again. It would 
have seemed absurd after his awful conduct three minutes 
before. I turned and ran back to the arbor as fast as ever 
I could go, and I opened the dryest and most pessimistic 
of the books upon my table, and read and read and read 
for an hour and a half, till mother came to look for me 
to tell me that the luncheon gong had sounded ever so long 
ago. 

1 shut my book with a bang, and went meekly back to 
the house with the dear mother, and 1 had not the least 
little bit of notion what I had been reading, except, like 
Hamlet^s book, that it was “ words, words, words. 1 
hated myself as I had never hated myself before, though 1 
have been ever keenly alive to my own hatefulness, to my 
hideous propensity for doing or saying the worst things on 
every possible occasion. To-day ; e! f-scorn was sharp as an 
acute bodily pain, as a raging toothache, for instance, or 
a gnawing rheumatism. Why had I so betrayed myself? 
Why had I gone out of my way to let him see that I loved 
him, and that my fidelity to Cyril is only maintained by a 
struggle? That while I was dismissing him and his love as 
a hopeless case, I was ready to throw myself into his arms 
and say, “ Let us goto Scotland together, let us be married 
by the blacksmith at Gretna Green; if there is any such 
person as the blacksmith, or any such place as Gretna 
Green left for true lovers in this unrornantic age.^^ 

I felt that he would never more have a good or proper 
opinion of me. 1 felt that if he had had a sister turn out 
like me he would have considered her a disgrace to the 
family. I was more completely miserable than I had ever 
been since those weary days at Wes(gate-on-Sea, when the 


WHOSE WAS THE HA HD ? 


247 


misery of my father’s death was a new thing, and when I 
was parted from my mother. A kind of helplessness and 
a dull aching sense of degradation had taken hold of me; 
and the worst of all was that for the first time in my life 1 
dared not confide in my mother. We sat opposite each 
other at the luncheon-table, neither of us caring to eat; she 
low-spirited about my step-father, who was buried in his 
book-room over at the cottage, I dumb and despairing. 

When the silence was at last broken it was that dear 
mother of mine who broke it in just the way which of all 
others jarred upon my irritated nerves. 

“ Daisy,” she said, “it is absolutely necessary to arrive 
at some definite idea about your marriage. Cyril has been 
pleading with me very earnestly, poor fellow. He is tired 
of his solitary existence in chambers; tired of bachelor 
amusements. He is really very fond of you, and he wants 
to begin his domestic life.” 

And then she went on in her sweet, tender way, which 
brought the tears into my eyes, to remind me that, though 
very young, I am no younger than she was when she cast 
in her lot with my father, and to tell me again, as she has 
so often told me, how completely happy her wedded life 
was. The more she said about that perfect union the 
more miserable I felt, until at last the tears rolled down 
my cheeks, and my handkerchief became a mere wet rag, 
and I felt that if I was like any bride at all it was the 
mourning bride in somebody’s play, of whom all I know is 
that her existence gave occasion for a much-quoted line 
about music, and an overpraised descriptive passage about 
a temple. 

“ Do you think you could make up your mind to be 
married in the autumn, Dairy?” mother asked, at last. 

I believe she took my tears to be only the expression of 
a general soft-hearted ness — there are some girls whose eyes 
brim over at a tender word — and not as indicative of sor- 
row, for she asked the question quite cheerfully. 

“ Which autumn?” inquired 1. 

“ This coming autumn, naturally.” 

“ Why, mother, that would be directly.” 

“ Ho, dearest, we are only in July. Suppose we were to 
fix upon October for the wedding. That would give us 
three months for your trousseau. All other things are 
ready. Your charming rooms in Grosvenor Square, and 


248 WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 

at least half this house. Your step-father and I will be 
overhoused even then; especially as Ambrose does not love 
this place, and would like to travel during some part of 
every year.’^ 

“ Yes, there is room enough for us all,^’ I said; “ and 
as for the trousseau I don’t care a straw about it. You 
have dressed me so well all my life that 1 never hunger for 
new clothes. It is only the badly dressed girls who are 
eager for wedding finery.” 

“ Leave the trousseau to me, then, Daisy,” said mother, 
“ and I will take care that it is worthy of the dearest girl 
in the world. I may tell Cyril that he shall begin his new 
life before the end of October, may 1 not?” 

“ Tell him just what you like, mother,” I answered, 
with a heart as heavy as lead. “You must be the best 
judge of what is right.” 

1 left her a few minutes afterward to go back to the 
garden. 1 felt a restlessness which made it impossible for 
me to stay iii the house, a perpetual fever and worry which 
seemed a part of the heavy burden that weighed on my 
spirits. And, oh, I had been so happy, so happy in that 
very garden only a year ago! 

1 waut to do what is right. If I made a mistake about 
my own feelings at Torcello, it is not right that another 
should suffer for my thoughtlessness and folly. I gave my 
promise far too lightly. It never occurred to me how 
solemn a thing it is to pledge one’s love for a life-time. I 
was rather pleased to be engaged, to have Cyril for my own 
property; and whenever doubtings or questionings arose in 
my mind I told myself that as time went on, and we grew 
older, 1 should grow more and more attached to him, being 
really very fond of him, in a sisterly kind of way, to begin 
with. Only when we were leaving Paris did I discover how 
dreadfully I had misread my own heart; for then only did 
I know what love — such love as mother felt for her sweet- 
heart — really means. It was just in one moment, in that 
parting at the station, that the di-eadful truth flashed upon 
me. Oh, the heartache of parting, the look in his eyes 
which seemed to plead for pity, to urge me to be brave, 
and cast off the pretense of love and own boldly to the i-eal- 
ity. He was not openly dishonorable; he waited for me to 
break my bonds. He could not know how strongly I was 
bound in gratitude and family love, as well as in honor, to 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


249 


Cyril. Nobody except mother and I can ever know how 
much I owe to Uncle Ambrose. No, there is no possibility 
of revoking my promise, and Cyril is all that is good and 
true, and I dare say my life will be very happy with him. 
I have but to forget those two short weeks in Paris, and 
this morning in the arbor, and his face when he left me. 
Not much surely to forget, seeing how much women do 
forget nowadays; seeing how quickly mothers forget their 
lost children, and sons and daughters their parents, and 
the most sorrowful widows the hii- hands they once adored. 
Forgetfulness must be easier than it seems to one, while 
memory is still fresh. 

I went back to the house, too restless to stay long any- 
where, and on my way to the hall door 1 was startled by a 
most hateful apparition in the person of that odious French- 
man who attacked me in Church Street, and who seems to 
have interwoven himself with our lives by his persistent 
appeals to my step-father’s charity. I know how kind and 
soft-hearted Uncle Ambrose is; and yet I should have given 
him credit for more firmness of mind than to allow himself 
to be hunted down by a ne’er-do-weel of this kind. The 
man was coming from the gate toward the hall door when 
we met face to face, and he looked considerably abashed at 
encountering me. 

“ Ah, you may well feel ashamed of yourself,” 1 said, 
indignantly. “ Yes, 1 am the lady you had the audacity 
to waylay in the street when you were tipsy.” 

‘‘You are Miss Hatrell,” he faltered, looking an abso- 
lute craven. 

“ Yes, 1 am Miss Hatrell. What do you want at my 
mother’s house?” 

“ I want to see — my employer — your step-father.” 

He said those two words, “ My employer ” in a most de- 
testable manner, implying contempt for the man for whom 
he had worked, and by whom he had no doubt been liber- 
ally paid. 

“ Mr. Arden is over the way, at his cottage,” I said. 
“ You can go to him there if you like. You will not be 
admitted into my mother’s house.” 

He looked at me from head to foot with a very insolent 
expression, but as his eyes met mine his countenance 
changed suddenlv, and there was more of fear than of in- 
solence in his look. His color faded to a sickly pallor, and 


250 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


he turned on his heel abruptly, muttering something which 
I did not hear. He walked quickly back to the gate and 
went out, and the shrug of his shoulders as he swung the 
gate open might mean anything in the world. 

My boudoir window overlooks the lane, and I saw him 
nearly an hour afterward leave the cottage. He looked 
both angry and crestfallen; and I fancy Uncle Ambrose 
had not proved so amenable as the applicant had expect- 
ed. I wonder whether he had mentioned our meeting in 
Church Street this time. I think not. The part he played 
in that encounter would scarcely recommend him to my 
step-father’s generosity. 


CHAPTER XX. 

SCATTERED TO THE WINDS. 

I HAVE seen that man again. He was lounging on the 
grassy bank above the lock this evening in the sunset, as 
Cyril and I came through in our wherry. There the creat- 
ure sprawled, looking hideously metropolitan in his black 
cutaway coat and black felt hat against the background of 
flowering grasses and the ragged old hedge-row, tangled 
with woodbine and starred with blackberry blossom. 

1 pointed him out to Cyril. 

“ That is the bookbinder-man who haunts your father,” 
I said ; and then I told him how the man had been at River 
Lawn inquiring for Uncle Ambrose. 

“ Did my father see him?” asked Cyril. 

“ Evidently; for he was nearly an hour at the cottage. 
1 saw him leave.” 

“My father may have kept him waiting for the best 
part of that time,” answered Cyril. “You know how 
absent-minded he is when he is among his books.” 

“ Yes, indeed,” said I, “ and 1 hope that odious man 
was sitting on the little oak bench in the lobby nursing his 
hat all the time.” 

The last entry is two days old; and now 1 have to record 
the strangest event in my life since I have come to wom- 
anhood — an event so startling that I am almost too agitated 
to write about it, although it happened yesterday. But the 
record must be written; for this book is to be all my life, 
a faithful history of the romance and the reality of my ex- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? -251 

istence, of hard facts and idle dreams, of every foolishness 
and every gleam of sense. In a word, this book is to be a 
photograph of me, a photograph in pen and ink, by an un- 
skilled photographer. 

1 awoke yesterday morning with that curious feeling 
with which I have so often awakened of late — a feeling of 
vague wonder. As I glide gradually from sleep to waking, 
I ask myself, “ What is it?^’ I know there is something 
amiss in my life; but what, but what? And then I remem- 
ber that I am engaged to be married, and that October is 
very near; and then 1 think how good it would be for every- 
body if I were to fall ill and die, and leave Cyril free to 
marry somebody who would really love him, and be hon- 
estly glad to be his wife. There are such girls, no doubt. 
I believe 1 could name seven between Henley and Reading. 

That was the feeling with which I awoke yesterday. A 
lovely, lovely day, and the church clock striking six with 
a clear and silvery sound that means a west wind, and my 
room filled with the sweetness of the small clematis, which 
grows over all this end of the house. 

I was out in the garden by seven, and breakfasted with 
mother. Uncle Ambrose, and Cyril at eight. There is a 
tennis tournament on at the vicarage, and Cyril and Bea- 
trice Reardon were to play the final yesterday, between 
eleven and one. I was expected to look on; but my early 
walk in the garden had given me a headache, or something 
else had; so 1 told Cyril I could not stand the noise and 
glare of the tennis-court at the vicarage, where all the 
Reardon family and hangers-on would be bawling and 
laughing, and making themselves generally detestable — to 
any one with a headache. So I said 1 would go for a gen- 
tle walk while he was finishing the match, and be home 
in time to congratulate him at luncheon. 

“ For you are sure to win,^' said 1. 

“ I don't know about that. Beatrice is a very fine 
player." 

“ She ought to be," said I, “ for she thinks of nothing 
else. To hear her talk one would suppose the honor of 
England was to be maintained by tennis." 

“ Well, it is a fine, manly game, and suits the girls of 
this generation," said he. 

“Don’t tire yourself, darling," he said, looking at me 
ever so kindly with his honest eyes, as we parted at the 


252 WHOSE WAS THE HAKD Y 

vicarage gate; and then I went for a long and lonely ram- 
ble in the Berkshire lanes. 

Those Berkshire lanes have been my one sovereign cure 
for the headache ever since my head was old enough to 
ache. A quiet walk between those flowering hedge-rows, 
those primrose and violet banks, those avenues of lords 
and ladies, has always soothed my aching head. If the 
sweet air and the scent of the flowers could only cure my 
aching heart as well, I thought yesterday — but heartache 
is not cured so easily. 

I went for a long, long ramble, without thought of 
CyriBs warning, rather wishing to tire myself into a state 
of apathy and sleepiness before 1 crept home. The church 
clock struck one as I came across the meadows, in sight of 
the village. The aftermath was deep and full of flowers, 
and the narrow footpath between the tall grass and the 
hedge-row was the quietest haven in which to think of 
one^s troubles. I felt sorry 1 was so near home when 1 
came to the little gate that opened out of the meadow 
into a deep lane leading directly to our own road. Kiver 
Lawn was in front, between me and the Thames, and Un- 
cle Ambrose’s cottage was on my left hand as I turned my 
face to the river. 

r was lingering at the gate, in a dreamy mood, when I 
heard footsteps in the lane. I thought they might belong 
to one of those everlasting Reardons, and I drew back be- 
hind a bushy blackthorn that grew beside the gate, and 
watched the passer-by. 

There was more than one — two men went slowly by, in 
earnest, and, I think, in angry conversation, though the 
tones of the one who was talking when they passed the gate 
were suppressed almost to a whisper. 

These two were Uncle Ambrose and the hateful man — 
the French bookbinder. Scarcely had they passed the gate 
when another man followed, stealthily, evidently listening 
to their conversation. 

The third man was Cyril — Cyril, my betrothed husband, 
Cyril, the pattern of honesty and honor, following at his 
father’s heels, and acting the degrading part of listener 
and spy. 

I could hardly believe my eyes. 1 was shocked, horri- 
fied, disgusted; and yet, after thinking the whole thing 
over during a most painful reverie, 1 was obliged to con- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


253 


fess to myself that if the opportunity had occurred to me I 
might have done the same thing. 

The haunting presence of that odious man is not to be 
endured without protest of some kind; and 1 think Cyril 
was justified in listening to any conversation in which that 
man bore a part, in order to protect his good, easy, and 
most unworldly wise father from being imposed upon. 

Yes, after serious reflection, I found excuse for my poor 
Cyril, although the sight of that creeping figure, with head 
bent forward to listen, gave me a dreadful shock. 

A greater shock was to come a few hours after, a shock 
which agitates my heart and nerves at this moment, not 
knowing how I ought to take it, whether I ought to be glad 
or sorry. Glad I can not be, recalling my poor Cyril’s 
white, agonized face as he talked to me by the river at five 
o’clock yesterday afternoon. Sorry I can not be when 1 
remember how cruelly the tie with which I had bound my- 
self weighed upon my spirits. 

It was late when I went into the house, but no one had 
gone to lunch. Mother was sitting alone in the morning- 
room. Her work-basket was on one side of her chair, her 
book-table on the other, but she was neither reading nor 
working, and 1 thought she looked worried and anxious. 

“ Uncle Ambrose among his books as usual, 1 suppose,” 
said I, feeling myself a dreadful hypocrite, though after all 
there had been plenty of time for him to get back to the 
library since he passed me in the lane. 

“ No doubt,” answered mother. “ He went across to 
the cottage soon after breakfast.” 

“Mother,” said I, “if I were you I would take him 
away from Berkshire. Let us all go to Salzburg, or the 
Dolomites, or Auvergne, or somewhere, at least until Octo- 
ber. This place doesn’t suit Uncle Ambrose. He is not 
happy, and you are not happy. Our lives are beginning 
to be a failure. There is something wrong somewhere.” 

“ Yes,” answered my mother, gravely, “ there is some- 
thing wrong. Your step-father is out of health. There is 
some depressing influence at work — I have done all I can 
— but I can not make him happy.” 

Poor mother! There was such a settled sadness in her 
tone that the tears rushed to my eyes, and it was all I 
could do not to sob aloud. 


254 : 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND Y 


1 understood her secret thought so well. She had done 
all she could. She had sacrificed her freedom, her fidelity 
to her first love, the idolized husband of her youth, out of 
gratitude to this faithful friend. She had put every selfish 
thought and feeling aside in order to reward his devotion, 
and the sacrifice had been useless. He was not happy. 

In one vivid glance I saw my own future fashioned after 
the semblance of my mother’s life to-day. I saw myself 
the wife of a man whom 1 could not love, and I saw him 
unhappy in the discovery which all my care could not keep 
from him. 

Poor mother, poor daughter! 

It was nearly three o’clock when mother and I went into 
the dining-room, and by that time I had contrived to 
cheer her with talk about the books we had been reading 
lately, and about a possible run to the Continent in the 
early part of September. We talked of Auvergne and of 
Cauterets, both of which districts were still unknown 
ground to us, and that unknown ground has always the 
attractions of an earthly paradise. There was no sign of 
Cyril. 

“ He must have lunched at the vicarage,” said my 
mother. “ Rather bad manners on his part. He ought 
to have come to lay his laurels at your feet. ” 

His laurels. Ah, yes, the result of the final. The prize 
is a copy of the “ Idylls of the King,” bound in vellum; 
and if Cyril wins I am to have the book. Beatrice will be 
savage at losing it, though I don’t believe she ever read 
twenty consecutive lines of poetry, unless it was “ John 
Gilpin.” 

After our feeble attempt at luncheon mother went off 
on one of her charitable expeditions. I knew that would 
last for a good two hours, so I resigned myself to take tea 
alone, unless Cyril should reappear. I was really anxious 
to see him, as I wanted to hear what he had overheard in 
the lane, and I fancied he would not keep his discovery 
from me, although he would expect to be reproved for his 
unworthy behavior in playing the spy upon his father. 
Of course there could be nothing to the discredit of Uncle 
Ambrose in his discovery, only the revelation of that dear 
good man’s weakness where anything in the way of a book 
is concerned. Such a devoted lover of books would allow 
himself to be imposed upon even by the man whose tr^de 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


255 


was to bind them. Indeed, it is extraordinary the impor- 
tance which these book-lovers attach to the outer covering 
of a book. I have seen volumes in Uncle Ambrose's 
library with landscapes painted on the edges of the paper, 
under the gilding — a decoration which has cost two or 
three pounds per volume; and the book is put in a shelf 
where nobody sees the painted edges from year’s end to 
year’s end. 

1 ordered my tea upon the terrace — exacijy where I had 
my tea-table that afternoon when Mr. Florestan and I 
took tea tete-a-tete. Somehow, hap-hazard, I think, 1 had 
taken Napier’s “ Wanderings on the Spey ” from a shelf 
in the library, and the book seemed to carry me nearer to 
Scotland — and him. “ No doubt he is enjoying himself 
immensely in that sportsman’s paradise,” thought I, and 
I turned over the leaves to see if Napier said anything 
about grouse shooting. 

It was a delicious afternoon, with a hot sun and a blue 
sky; a sky flecked with little fleecy clouds, as if Dejanira 
had been throwing about the wool that Hercules spun for 
her. It was the kind of afternoon which used to mean un- 
qualified bliss; and even in spite of my troubles I could not 
help feeling a kind of unreflecting sensuous content as I 
lolled back in my pet wicker-chair and watched the ripple 
of the river, and the gentle movement of the willows where 
the opposite bank curved inward toward the reach over 
which the old solemn church-tower casts its dark shadow. 

The second quarter after four chimed from the dear old 
tower, the tea-table stood ready, the little copper kettle 
hissed gayly, hut still there was no sign of Cyril. I began 
to feel just a little uneasy about him, for it was so very 
unlike his usual way to be anywhere within reach and not 
come to hunt me out every hour or so, either for a ramble 
or a ride, a single, or a row on our beloved river. 

It was nearly five when I saw a young man coming across 
the lawn to the terrace where I was sitting — a young man 
in tennis flannels such as those I had seen Cyril wear when 
he started for the tournament that morning; a man of 
Cyril’s height and bulk, but not the least like Cyril in fig- 
ure or walk, as I saw him in the distance; for this man 
stooped as Cyril never did, and this man’s step had none 
of the elastic force of Cyril’s rapid movements. Yet thi§ 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


256 


man with the bent shoulders and dull, slow walk was Cyril, 
and no one else — Cyril transformed by some heavy trouble. 

He came quietly to the empty chair by my side, and 
seated himself in silence, and looked at me with eyes whose 
expression I can never forget. All foolish, frivolous words 
died on my lips. 1 could only watch him in mute expect- 
ancy. 

“ Daisy,^’ he began, solemnly, in a voice that was even 
stranger than his altered looks, “ I think you know that I 
have loved you honestly, truly, and dearly. 

'‘lam sure you have, dear,’^ I answered, with a sinking 
heart, knowing that I myself dared not have said as much 
of my own truth and honesty. 

“ I have not gone into hysterics about my passion, or 
written verses, or done any other of the wild things that 
perhaps 1 might have done had we met as strangers at 
Venice the other day and fallen in love with each other at 
first sight. I have taken everything for granted — too 
much for granted, perhaps. I grew up loviijg you, from 
the time 1 was a lad at school and you a kind of household 
fairy in a white frock, with bright hair and dove-like eyes. 
I went on loving you, and claimed you as my own almost 
as if I had a right to you — as if the trouble of wooing and 
winning were not for me, since my dear love had been born 
expressly to make me happy. That is how I have felt 
about you, Margaret, and perhaps I have seemed a tame 
wooer in consequence. 

“ No, no, 110 ,^’ 1 exclaimed, eagerly. “ You have been 
all that is good and true, it is 1 who am weak and change- 
able and frivolous, it is I wdio am to blame — 

My too ready tears stopped me — I thought that he had 
discovered my guilty secret, that he had found out some- 
how that I had left off caring for him and had begun to 
care for Gilbert Florestan. i think I was going to throw 
myself on my knees at his feet, when he stopped my un- 
certain movement with a hand laid heavily upon my arm. 
I doubt if he had heard one word of my self-accusation. 

“ That is all over and done with, Daisy, he said, “ our 
wooing at Venice and elsewhere; and all the happy days 
and hours we have had together; and all our plans for the 
future; and the rooms that have been made beautiful for 
us to live in; and‘the life we were to lead; all those things 
must be as a dream that we have dreamed, and you must 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 257 

teach yourself to forget me, and to forget that you were 
ever my promised wife/^ 

Yes, he had found out all the truth, I told myself. My 
head drooped forward upon my clasped hands, and I had 
what the Reardon girls call a good cry They have a good 
cry about the most contemptible things; if their dress- 
maker disappoints them, or if the wet weather prevents an 
intended tennis match — but this good cry of mine seemed 
wrung out of a breaking heart. I felt so. sorry for Cyril, 
so ashamed of myself, I did not for one moment doubt 
that he had discovered my inconstancy, and that he was 
setting me free to marry Mr. Florestan, if he cared to have 
such a worthless weather-cock. 

“ My darling, donT cry so bitterly,’^ he pleaded, more 
tenderly than I ever remember him to have done in all our 
foolish little love scenes. “ You are breaking my heart, 
and I have need to be strong and stern to face a cruel fut- 
ure. 

“You think that I am fickle, I said at last, “ and not 
worthy of your trust. 

“You fickle, you unworthy,’’ he cried. “ Why, my 
dearest, I know that you are the truest and purest of creat- 
ures. It is no doubt of you that infiuences me. There is 
an insuperable bar to our marriage; an obstacle with which 
you and I have nothing to do. ” 

“Is it my mother who is trying to part us?” I asked, 
wonderingly, for I thought mother might have read my 
secret. I had never been able to pretend much in my 
talks with her. 

“No, Daisy, your mother has nothing to do with this 
matter. She knows nothing of my determination yet, and 
I am going to ask you a favor.” 

“ What is that?” 

“ I want you to let your mother suppose that it is you 
who have broken the engagement. You can say that you 
did not know your own mind when you accepted me, that 
you were too precipitate — the sort of thing girls say pretty 
often, I believe. I don’t think, as society is constituted 
nowadays, there will be very much astonishment at the 
alteration of our plans. I hope before a year is over that 
my darling will have found a worthier lover, and as I shall 
be far away, no doubt people will soon forget me.” 

“ You will be far away,” I echoed. “ Where?” 

9 


25S 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“ In Australia. I shall try to begin a new life on the 
other side of the world; breed sheep on the Darling Downs, 
or turn wine-grower, Heaven knows what; but anyhow, 
my future shall be as far remote from my past as distance 
can make it.^’ 

A new light flashed upon me, and I began to think that 
the question of money was at the bottom of poor Cyril’ s 
trouble, and that in honor I was bound to refuse this 
offered release. . However I might wish to cancel the past, 
I could not be so mean as to break my engagement because 
my lover had grown suddenly poor. 

“ I begin to suspect your motive,” I said, seriously. 
“ Uncle Ambrose has lost his fortune. Its coming was 
like a fairy-tale, and it has vanished like gold in fairy-land. 
Oh, Cyril, surely you know that I never cared about your 
father’s wealth, or thought whether you were rich or poor. 
Mother and I have plenty of money for all of us.” 

“ My dearest, I know your generous heart. No, it is 
not a money trouble that has darkened my days; but there 
is a trouble; and it is one which I must keep locked up in 
my own breast till 1 die.” 

“It is something about yourself,” I speculated, pitying 
him too much to leave the mystery unquestioned; “ some 
mortal disease, perhaps. You have consulted a physician 
who has told you that you may die suddenly, and you fear 
to make me unhappy.” 

“No, Daisy, medical men and I have had few dealings 
since I was vaccinated. Don’t ask any more questions, 
dear. I dare tell you no more than I told you at first. All 
is over between us; and my life must be spent thousands 
of miles away. I could not trust myself within reach of 
an express train that would bring me back to you.” 

He bent over me as I sat motionless with wonder, look- 
ing at the bright water and the lights and shadows on the 
wood. He pressed his lips upon my forehead in a farewell 
kiss. 

“ Good-bye, my Margaret, mine no more,” he said, and 
then turned away and walked slowly across the lawn by the 
way he had come. 

I heard the gate in tne lence open and shut, and 1 knew 
that he had gone across the road to his father’s cottage. 

I sat looking at the water in a mute, dull wonder, while 
quarter after quarter chimed from the old gray tower, and 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


259 


the shadows deepened, and the golden lights grew dim upon 
beach and oak, and the willows in the foreground changed 
from green to gray. The footmen carried away the tea- 
table in their horrid mechanical way, which makes one 
think that they would clear a table and arrange a room in 
just the same leisurely fashion if one were lying dead upon 
the carpet. The evening darkened, and still 1 sat there 
wondering and musing. I was free — free to love whom I 
pleased, free to marry any one who cared to ask for my 
hand. 1 had the liberty for which my soul had longed ever 
since I left Paris. And yet 1 could not feel glad. 1 could 
not be glad while he was so sorry. Poor Cyril, my first 
playfellow, my boyish sweetheart, the first admirer who 
ever told me my face was worth looking at. How well I 
remembered those first compliments, and how flushed and 
flattered I felt when the young Oxonian told me he liked 
the gown I wore, or that my eyes looked dark under the 
shadow of my sailor hat. How foolish and vain 1 must 
have been when I was fifteen and wore my first long gown. 

^ 0 , I could not be glad. I felt such an impostor. Sure- 
ly I ought to have confessed the truth in that last moment; 
1 ought to have told him plainly and candidly that my 
heart had gone from him months ago, and that the fancied 
treasure which he was renouncing was the poorest thing in 
the world — a jilt’s unstable affection. There might have 
been some consolation for him in knowing the worthless- 
ness of the thing he surrendered. 

And yet, and yet — it might have been cruel to undeceive 
him. It was better for him, perhaps, to believe that he 
had received measure for measure, that I had loved him 
to the last. 

“ If ever I marry it will be years hence, 1 dare say,” I 
told myself, “ and he will be in Australia, happily married 
himself by that time.” 

This was a comforting thought, but even this could not 
prevent me feeling very unhappy about Cyril and his most 
mysterious trouble. What was it? Had he gambled? 
Had he kept his race-horses? Had he forged? One hears 
and reads of things quite as extraordinary as forging on 
the part of a seemingly honorable young man. And the 
trouble was obviously a very serious one. It might be 
some casual forging, executed on the spur of the moment. 


260 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


after a wine at Christchurch, when the poor, dear fellow 
hardly knew what he was doing. 

I could fancy the whole scene! Some wiciked collegian 
— several years older than Cyril — putting a pen into his 
hand and making him sign a bond, or an I 0 U, or a 
bill or something, with somebody else’s name — the dean's 
perhaps — to redeem his losses at cards. He has often told 
me how wild they are at Christchurch, and how they throw 
one another into the fountain, and play poker, and do all 
manner of dreadful things. The more I thought of 
Cyril's unhappiness the more I felt inclined to believe that 
it must date from his college days. It was a sword that 
had been hanging over his head for a long time, and the 
hair had broken to-day. 

There was another idea which struck me afterward, as I 
walked back to the house. What if Cyril, in a weak, good- 
natured way, had got himself engaged to another girl, a 
girl he detested, and felt that honor obliged him to marry 
her because she was of inferior rank and because he de- 
tested her. 

This would account for his resolution to go to the other 
side of the world and begin a new life. He would marry 
this person and take her straight off to the antipodes, where 
no one belonging to his own world would ever see him in 
his disgrace. Poor Cyril! My heart bled for him, as I 
thought what his life would be like, married to a vulgar 
woman who would misplace the aspirate, and talk of him 
as Mr. Harden. It would be all too dreadful, and I felt 
as if I would have rather sacrificed my own happiness than 
that he should be so utterly lost. 

Mother came out of the drawing-room window to meet 
me as I drew near the house. She had just returned from 
her visiting, having tasted half a dozen cups of tea in half 
a dozen tiny kitchen-parlors, and had heard no end of sad 
stories. Yet she looked happier than usual, for she had 
been giving happiness to others. 

I had been keeping my heart locked against that dear 
mother for months; but now I was determined to be no 
longer secret and prevaricating. I put my arms round her 
neck, and laid my bewildered head upon her shoulder. 

“ Mother dear, you have no need to trouble about that 
horrid trousseau , I said, half laughing and half crying; 
“a change has come over the spirit of our dream — mine 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


261 


and Cyrirs. We have agreed that we don’t quite suit each 
other — or at least that we answer better as brother and sis- 
ter than we ever could as husband and wife — and so^ in 
the friendliest way, we have agreed to part. He is going to 
Australia to look about him; and 1 am going to stay with 
you.” 

I believe I was slightly hysterical after this, and I felt 
very much ashamed of myself as I heard myself making a 
ridiculous noise without the power to stop. 

Poor mother kissed and comforted me, and scolded me 
a little, till I quieted down, and then she sat by my side on 
our favorite sofa to discuss the situation. 

“ This is very sudden, Daisy,” she said, and 1 saw that 
she looked grave and troubled. 

“ It seems sudden,” 1 answered, “ but it has been in 
the air for some time — ever since we left Paris.” 

“ Ever since you left Paris!” repeated mother, as if she 
saw a light. 

“ You must have seen that 1 was reluctant to name any 
time for my marriage, and that 1 didn’t take the faintest 
interest in my trousseau.” 

“ Yes, I saw that, and 1 thought it only meant my 
Daisy was less frivolous than most girls.” 

“ It meant that I was a hypocrite and impostor; that I 
allowed myself to be engaged to Cyril out of sheer frivolity 
— mere idle vanity, which made me pleased to have an ad- 
mirer. For months past I have been chafing against my 
bonds, and 1 can not be too grateful to Cyril for having 
set me free.” 

“ Did you ask him to release you?” inquired mother, 
looking at me searchingly with her soft, serious eyes. 

1 could not tell her a deliberate falsehood, but 1 could 
prevaricate, which I dare say is just as bad. 

“ There was no necessity for me to ask him,” I said, 

he understood my feelings — we understood each other 
perfectly. Don’t ask any more questions, mother dar- 
ling,” I pleaded, “ at least not about poor Cyril. He will 
be leaving us very soon, I fear. Indeed — indeed, there is 
no need for you to grieve,” 1 urged, kissing her dear, anx- 
ious face. “ It is better as it is.” 

“ Is it, Daisy?” she exclaimed, sadly. “ 1 can not quite 
think that. The change seems light to you, but it is a sad 
breaking up of home and family ties. The nest has been 


262 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


made ready for the birds, and now they are to part and 
scatter far and wide. This will be a blow for your step- 
father. He was so proud of your engagement to Cyril, so 
happy in the thought of your future union. The disap- 
pointment will be bitter for him. And he is out of health, 
and hardly in a condition to bear a great sorrow. 

“ I am very sorry on his accouiit,^^ 1 faltered, “ but 
though I am not to be his daughter-in-law, I shall be 
always his loving and obedient friend and pupil. I can 
never forget all that he has been to me from my childhood 
until now.^' 

“lam glad of that, Daisy, answered the dear mother, 
her eyes filling with tears. “ I should be very sorry if 
either you or I could be unthoughtful of the best friend 
widow and daughter ever had in the world, the most un- 
selfish, the most forbearing. You know that my marriage 
with Ambrose Arden was not a love-match. No woman 
can love a second husband as I loved your father. It was 
a marriage of friendship, of grateful affection, of unquali- 
fied and admiring regard. I wanted to make the latter 
part of my friend^s life as happy as a woman’s tenderness 
could make it. My only disappointment in this second 
marriage, my only regret since my wedding-day, has been 
the fear that in spite of all my care your step-father has 
not been happy. There is a little rift in the lute, Daisy, 
and God knows how it came there. It is none of my mak- 
ing.” 

“ Dearest mother, no wife on earth could do more to 
make a husband’s life full of sunshine than you have done,” 
1 told her. “ If there is some touch of shadow mingled 
with the light you must not take it to heart. Uncle Am- 
brose is a scholar and a recluse, a man of peculiar charac- 
ter and temperament, and you must not be surprised if he 
has intervals of melancholy brooding. A man who reads 
the modern metaphysicians can only be happy when he 
has no time for thought. Uncle Ambrose thinks too 
much, mother. That is the only evil.” 

She kissed me fondly at this; and I felt somehow that 
our natural confidences had drawn us nearer to each other 
than we had been since her marriage. 

“ Yes, Daisy, no doubt that is the evil. Ambrose has 
lived the scholar’s life too long to be able to enjoy com- 


'NVHOSR WAS THE HAND? 263 

moil place pleasures like other men. He is too old to 
begin a new liie. He is like Eugene Aram."” 

“ Eugene x\ram?’^ 

“What am I thinking of, Daisy, to compare my hus- 
band to a murderer.^’ 

“ Ah, but you meant it as a compliment,^’ I told her 
laughing. “ Eugene Aram was such a delightful mur- 
derer. The crime that darkens his past only deepens the 
interest in his character, and by the time the mystery 
stands revealed the reader is devoted to the criminal.” 

“ That is only the glamour of the novelist, Daisy. De- 
pend upon it the real Aram was a smooth-faced, canting 
hypocrite, with murder lurking in his downcast eyes, I 
can not believe that any man capable of such a crime could 
over win a noble-minded woman like Madeline. She would 
have recoiled from him instinctively.” 

We read Bulwer’s romance together not long ago, and 
the color of the story is still vivid in both our minds. 

My mother looked at the clock on the chimney-piece. 

“ A quarter to eight, Daisy, and we must dress for din- 
ner, and after dinner I must tell your step-father what has 
happened. He has no idea of it, I suppose.” 

“ 1 think not.” 

“ Poor Ambrose, I am sorry for him. No, love, I don’t 
blame you or Cyril,” she added, hastily, as if she saw my 
look of self-reproach. “ It is not your fault, either of you, 
if you do not love each other well enough to take life-long 
vows. It is better to have found out the truth in time; 
but the disappointment will be not less bitter to Cyril’s 
father. It pleased him to believe that his affection for me 
would be in a manner carried on into the coming years 
by his son’s union with my daughter.” 

“ I shall always be fond of Cyril,” I said, “ asabrother. 
That has been my only mistake. 1 fancied sisterly affec- 
tion meant more than it really did.” 

“ Before you left Paris,” said my mother, looking at me 
searchingly, until I felt myself turning scorchingly red 
under that earnest look of hers. “ liuii away and dress, 
Daisy. I hear Ambrose going upstairs to his dressing- 
room. \^'e shall all be late for dinner.” 

I ran to my room, three steps at a time. I felt happier 
than 1 had been at any time since we left Venice, in spite 
of all that had been done to make me happy. I was sorry 


264 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


for Cyril, honestly and sincerely sorry, but a burden was 
lifted off my heart, and I could not wonder that it beat 
less heavily. 


CHAPTER XXL 
“enough that I CAN LIVE. 

As Clara Arden anticipated, dinner was late that evening 
at River Lawn. It was nearly half past eight when Mr. 
and Mrs. Arden and Daisy met in the drawing-room, and 
the butler had been hovering in the hall for nearly half an 
hour wailing to announce dinner. 

“ You are looking so pale and so tired, Ambrose, Mrs. 
Arden said, as they seated themselves in the light of the 
large shaded lamp, supplemented with clusters of wax 
candles, a light in which she could see the color and expres- 
sion of his face better than in the softer lamp-light of the 
drawing-room. 

“ I don’t think that I am any more tired than usual,” ho 
answered. “ You know what your fashionable physician 
said of me. You must not expect me to look particularly 
robust.” 

“ He said that you were not to devote yourself to 
intellectual work, Ambrose, and you have been doing noth- 
ing else since he saw you.” 

“ Old habits are not so easily put off as doctors pretend 
to think. They tell the drunkard he must leave off 
brandy, and they tell (he scholar that he must live without 
books with just the same admirable complacency as if 
they were asking very little.” 

“ I’m afraid we ought to leave Berkshire,” pursued his 
wife, looking at him anxiously. “lam sure that }ou will 
be better away from your books. ” 

I shall be ready to leave my books when my book is 
finished. I am nearing the end. When that is done 1 
will go where you like. ” 

“It is not where I like, but where you like,” she said, 
sadl3\ “ I am happier here than anywhere else.” 

“ Then let us stay here — till the end of our lives. You 
know what Horace says, Daisy.” 

“ No, no, I am not selfish enough to keep you here, 
when I see that you are dispirited and out of heallh. We 
will go back to London, we will go to Italy, anywhere.” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


'265 

There was a silence after this, Daisy being more thoughtful 
than, usual, and not offering any diversion by the girlish 
prattle with which she usually brightened the meal, 
whether her heart was light or heavy. No word had yet 
been spoken about Cyril’s absence. The butler had 
quietly removed the cover laid for him and the chair in 
which he was to have sat; but nobody mentioned his name 
till nearly the end of the meal, when Clara said, rather 
nervously: 

“ Cyril is dining out, 1 suppose?” 

“ He has gone to London,” Ambrose Arden answered, 
quietly. ” He is not coming back to-night.” 

Clara looked at him wonderingly as he answered. Had 
Cyril told his father that his engagement was at an end? 
She could hardly believe that her husband would have 
taken the blow so quietly. It was left for her, she thought, 
to tell him of his disappointment. 

Daisy slipped away to her own den as soon as she was 
free to leave the dining-room, and Mrs. Arden entered the 
drawing-room alone, and sat there waiting anxiously for 
her husband to n join her. It was very seldom that he lin- 
gered in the dining-room after his wife had left him, but 
this evening he was sitting in an abstracted mood at his 
end of the table, and did not stir. when mother and daugh- 
ter rose and wentawa}". It was perhaps the first time that 
he had ever allowed his wife to open that door for herself 
when he was in the room. Absent-minded and dreamy 
by temperament, he had yet rarely failed in courtesy to the 
woman who was to him this world’s one woman. 

He sat with his head bent over the empty dessert-plate, 
and the untouched glass of claret which the butler had 
filled unbidden. He sat brording in the lamp-light for 
nearly half an hour; and th; n, with a deep-drawn sigh, 
he rose slowly, and went to the drawing-room, where his 
wife was sitting by an i p^ n window looking out at the 
moonlit water, very sad of la art. 

He went over to her and seated himself by her side. 

“ Cyril is gone from us for good, Clara,” he said. 
“ I suppose you know that.” 

“ I know that all is over between him and Daisy; but 
1 thought you did not know. I feared you would not be 
able to take the blow so quietly, knowing how pleased you 
were at their engagement.” 


266 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


“ I was pleased because it was a link that drew me 
nearer to you. It was of our union I thought, not 
theirs. Nothing can touch me, Clara, while I have you. 

“ Did he tell you why he and Daisy had made up their 
minds to part.^’ 

“ Yes, he told me his reasons.” 

“ And hers. You will blame my aaughter for fickle- 
ness, I fear, iVmbrose.” 

“Blame her, blame Daisy! Your daughter — and my 
pupil. Why, she was the bond between us years ago, 
when I was but a stranger within your gates. My love for 
your daughter is second only to my love for you.” 

His wife took up his hand and kissed it in a rapture of 
grateful affection. 

“ How good you are to us, Ambrose,” she said, softly. 
“ Harsh words never fall from your lips. If I could only 
see you happy, my heart would be full of content.” 

“I am happy, Clara, happy in having won my heart’s 
desire. What can a man have in this world more than 
that — the one desire of his life, the boon for which he has 
waited and longed through years of patience and silent 
hope. H there is happiness upon earth 1 have obtained it. ” 

“ I believe your metaphysicians teach you that there is 
no such thing as happiness.” 

“ Oh, they only preach the gospel of doubt. The whole 
science of metaphysics consists in the questioning spirit, 
which analyzes everything without arriving at any definite 
conclusion about anything.” 

“ Poor Cyril!” sighed Clara., after a pause of contem- 
plative silence, which seemed i.i harmony with the stillness 
of the summer night and the beauty of the moonlit land- 
scape, garden and river, meadow and woodland, and dark 
church tower. 

“ Poor Cyril! It seems so sad for him to leave us, to go 
out into the world as a wanderer; and yet, of course, it 
would be impossible for our old life to go on, now that he 
has broken with Daisy.” 

“No, the old life would not be possible. It belongs to 
the past already. Did he tell Daisy where he was going?” 

“ To Australia, he said. He consulted with you as to 
his destination, no doubt.” 

“ No; he told me he should go away; but he did not 
enter upon his plans.” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


267 


“ Poor fellow. He was very unhappy, I fear. 

“ He did not coiifide his sorrows to me. He had made 
up his mind; and it was not for me to try to change his 
resolution. 

His whole manner altered as he spoke of his son. There 
was a hardness in his tone that surprised and grieved his 
wife, who a minute before luid done him homage as the 
most admirable of men. His manner in speaking of her 
daughter had expressed the utmost tenderness. The tone 
in which he spoke of his own son was cold and stern almost 
to vindictiveness. Clara feared there had been a quar- 
rel between father and son, and that Ambrose Arden had 
resented the concealment of Daisy’s engagement with an 
unjust wrath. 

“ You must not be angry with Cyril,” she said, softly. 
“ I fear that it is Daisy’s hckleness that is the beginning 
and end of our disappointment. She owned as much to 
me, poor child. She gave her promise too lightly, and re- 
pented almost as soon as it was given, although she had 
not the courage to confess her mistake.” 

“ Well, we will say that it is Daisy’s fault, or that both 
are fickle. There are no hearts broken, 1 believe; Cyril 
goes out into the world, a stranger to us henceforward.” 

“ Not a stranger, Ambrose. Your son will always be 
dear to us both.” 

“ He will be in Australia, where our love or our indiffer- 
ence can not touch him.” 

There was a bitterness in his tone which warned Clara to 
pursue the subject no further. She could not doubt after 
this that there had been a breach between father and son — 
and these two who had been so fond of each other and so 
proud of each other hitherto had parted ill friends. And 
it was all Daisy’s doing, poor little feather-headed Daisy, 
who should have been a bond of union, but had become the 
occasion of disunion. 

Clara Arden felt weighed down by the sense of inexpres- 
sible sadness as she sat looking out into the moonlit gar- 
den, that garden which she and her first lover had found 
a wilderness, and which he had made into a paradise for 
her sake. It was her girlish admiration of that old garden 
by the river which had made Robert Hatrell eager to pos- 
sess the place. He laid it at her feet as if it were a bunch 
of roses, and never counting the cost of anything which 


2‘6S 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


pleased her. Had it been ten times as costly a place lie 
would have bought it for her. 

llis image was with her to-night more vividly than it 
had been for a long time. It was as if he himself were 
at hand, in all the warmth and energy of life, and that she 
had but to stretch out her arms to beckon him to her. 
And, oh, with what a heart-sickness of longing and regret 
she turned toward that idolized image! Face to face with 
the inexplicable gloom of Ambrose Arden^s temper, she 
recalled her first husband’s happy nature, his joyous out- 
look, and keen delight in life. Willi him her days had 
seemed one perpetual holiday. If she ever complained it 
had been because that energetic temperament took life 
and its enjoyments at a faster pace than suited her own 
reposeful temper. But how bright, how gay those days 
had been; how frank and open her c mpanion’s face; how 
expansive his speech and manner! He had never hidden a 
care from her. W ere his thoughts light or heavy she shared 
them, and knew every desire of his heart. 

But in this man, this cherished friend of many years, she 
had discovered mysteries. He had griefs which he would 
not share with her. He was angry with his only son; they 
had parted within a few hours, perhaps for all this life; 
and he would tell her nothing of the cause of their parting, 
he invited no sympathy. He sat by her side in melancholy 
silence, and she felt the burden of unhappiness which she 
was not allowed to share. 

“ if he would only talk of his trouble, if he would only 
let me comfort him, I should be twice as good a wife,” she 
thought, despondently. “It is not my fault if our lives 
are growing further apart.” 

After this night an emotionless monotony marked Clara 
Arden’s days in the house where her early married life had 
been so full of happiness, and where her one great sorrow, 
the sorrow of a life-time, had come upon her. The idea 
of going on the Continent for the autumn was not carried 
out. The scholar’s book absorbed him wholly in the wan- 
ing of the year, and he preferred the quiet of Kiver Lawn to 
all the glory of the Italian lakes, or all the art of Florence. 
He s])ent a good many hours of every day in his old cottage 
study, while his wife and her daughter lived very much as 
they had lived in Mrs. Hatrell’s widowhood. 

“ Your second marriage and my engagement to Cyril 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


269 


seem almost a dream, mother, when you and I are sitting 
here alone together, and Uncle Ambrose is poring over his 
books on the other side of the road,'’ said Daisy, as she sat 
at her mother’s feet in the morning-room, pretending to 
read Lecky’s “ England Under the Georges,” but looking 
up every now and then to talk. “ I call him quite a perfect 
husband in his way — never interfering with our plans, 
never grumbling at his dinner, always courteous and kind, 
and ready to do what we like.” 

” Yes, he is all goodness to us,” answered her mother, 
‘‘ and one would have nothing left to wish for if he were 
only happy.” 

” J dare say he is happy — in his way, mother — his calm, 
philosophical way, which used to soothe and tame me in 
my rebellious fits when 1 was a child. He was always the 
same, don’t you know. Tranquil and rather mysterious — 
like deep still water: like Lake Leman whose depth one 
would never suspect if one did not see the mountains up- 
side down in the water, and get reminded by those delusive 
shadows of the real depth below. Rely upon it. Uncle 
Ambrose has all he cares for in this woild, having 3^011 and 
his books, and you give yourself groundless trouble when 
you are anxious about him.” 

Her mother sighed, but did not answer. She had 
watched her husband’s face with a new anxiety ever since 
Cyril’s departure; and she had seen the lines deepen, and 
the melancholy droop of the firm lips grow more marked. 

No one at River Lawn knew anything about Cyril’s 
whereabouts, unless it was his father. He had left Lam- 
ford within a few hours of this interview with Daisy, tak- 
ing with him only a single portmanteau, as Beatrice Rear- 
don informed her friend, this young lady having a habit of 
meeting every fly that ever entered or departed from the 
village. 

‘‘ It’s no use telling me you haven’t quarreled,” pro- 
tested Beatrice, when Daisy denied any ill-feeling between 
Cyril and herself. “ I saw the poor dear fellow’s white 
face as he drove by, acknowledging my bow in a most dis- 
tracted manner, and I never saw such a change in any 
man. A few hours before he had been the gayest of us all 
on the tennis lawn, and now he looked positively like his 
own ghost. You must have had a dreadful row, Daisy.” 


270 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“ We had no row, as you call it. We only agreed that it 
was better for us to part.^’ 

“Poor Cyril! I had no idea he was so desperately in 
love with you. He used to take things so very easily,^'' 
remarked Beatrice, with all the freedom of friendship. 
“ Of course 1 always suspected you of not caring a straw 
for him. You were not in the least like an engaged girl. 
You didn’t spoon him a little bit.” 

Daisy shuddered. She was one of the few girls who are 
revolted by such forms of speech as prevail in some girlish 
circles. Miss Keardon affected a fast and slangy manner 
as a kind cf perpetual protest against (he dullness and 
monotony of her life in a Berkshire village. She wanted 
everybody to understand that there was nothing rustic or 
pastoral about her mind or her manners. 

This was all that Daisy or her mother heard about Cyril’s 
departure. He had gone to his chambers most likely, 
where he could prepare at his leisure for that long voyage 
of which he had talked. The greater part of his posses- 
sions, his books and guns, and sporting tackle of all kinds 
were in the Albany. He had his own man to pack for him, 
and accompany him to a new world, if he was so minded. 


CHAPTER XXII. 
daisy’s diary. 

How peacefully the days have slipped by since poor 
Cyril went away. I find myself thinking of him and writ- 
ing of him as “Poor Cyril,” which is really an imperti- 
nence, as I daresay by this time he is perfectly happy, and 
has fallen in love with some magnificent Australian girl, a 
higher order of being, like the Gy in the “ Coming Race,” 
a powerfully built creature who can ride buck-jumpers, 
and camp out in the bush, without fear of consequences. 
I fear I have very narrow and insular ideas about Aus- 
tralia, which I can only picture to myself as one vast 
jungle, interspersed with convict settlements. 

Cyril is happy, no doubt, by this time, sad as he looked on 
that day of sudden parting; so 1 may allow myself to feel 
happy with an easy conscience. I should be perfectly 
happy if it were not for the change in Uncle Ambrose, who 
has evidently some secret grief, some corroding care which 
he will not lighten by sharing it with his wife. 1 can but 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


m 


fear that mother was right in her foreboding, and that he 
has takeji the cancelment of CyriPs engagement sorely to 
heart. It is his love for mother which is wounded. He 
wanted a perfect union, that we should be one household, 
bound by every tie that can make a family circle indivisi- 
ble. It must be very hard for him too to know that his 
son, his only child, has been self-banished from his home 
and his native country. 

If my fickleness alone had been to blame— if Cyril had 
found out my foolish secret, and that the man who was 
nothing to me was a great deal nearer my heart than my 
plighted husband — if he had broken with me on this ac- 
count, my conscience would hardly have been as easy as it 
is. But I have at least the comfort of knowing that Cyril 
had some weighty reason upon his own side for parting 
from me, and that, therefore, I am not actually to blame’ 
for the existing state of things. It was he who took the 
initiative step. It was he who said, “ All is over between 
us. 

I have left off puzzling myself with idle speculations 
about his motive. Whatever his reasons may have been I 
feel assured that it was very serious and. entirely convinc- 
ing to his own mind — that he obeyed what was to him a 
stern necessity. I can but be grateful to Providence that 
has released me from a bond that could not have brought 
real happiness either to Cyril or me, and looking back now 
at the past I feel how cowardly I was in not daring all and 
telling him the truth about my own feelings. He was no 
coward. When the hour came in which he felt he ought 
to break with me, there was no hesitation or wavering on 
his side; and yet I believe he loved me better in that part- 
ing hour than he had ever loved me in his life before. 
Poor Cyril I — old friend and playfellow — I hope the young 
Australian will be kind and true, and that his life in that 
far world may be full of all good things; gold in monster 
nuggets, sheep in mighty flocks, horses that are not buck- 
jumpers, woods of eucalyptus, groves of mimosa, biids of 
vivid plumage, aiid the most perfect thijigs in bungalows. 

1 am really very sad about Uncle Ambrose. I think he 
fights against the gloom that gathers round him as a strong 
man stricken in the prime of life by some insidious malady 
might fight against disease; and yet the gloom deepens. 
With him low spirits seem actually a disease; and 1 trem- 


272 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


blo and turn cold sometimes at tlie thouglit that it may 
forebode some mental malady which may darken all our 
days. My mother seldom, if ever, sees him as I see him 
when she is not present. When she is with him I know 
that he makes a stupendous effort to appear cheerful, to 
seem interested in the things she loves; but when she leaves 
him the mask drops and 1 see him as he really is — a man 
weighed down by deep-rooted melancholy. 

I have talked to him of the books I used to read with 
him, the low-spirited school of metaphysicians, and of 
Heine, who saw all things with the saddened eyes of a man 
whose life was like Pope^s, “a long disease.^^ We have 
talked of theology, and 1 have discovered the hopelessness 
of this creed — that for him there is nothing beyond this life 
of ours, this poor brief life, in which there are so many 
•chances of being miserable against a single chance of being 
happy. No, for him there is no beyond — for him the dead 
are verily dead. 

1 told him yesterday that I believe not only in a world 
where wc should meet our loved and lost, and know them 
again, and live with them again in a better and loftier state 
of being, but that I also believe in the influence of our be- 
loved dead upon our thoughts and actions even while we 
are on this side of the veil that parts flesh and spirit. 

“ That influence is only memory,^^ he said; “ it has no 
other source than your own mind — moved by your own 
loving heart. 

I told him that it was something more than memory — 
something independent of my own mind or my own heart 
—an influence that flashed upon me when least 1 expected 
it— sudden, mysterious, full of suggestions of another world. 

1 told him that there were moments in which 1 could feel 
that my father was with me, and that he was loving and 
pitying me in my weakness as a woman just as he used to 
pity me when I was a foolish child. 

A delusion, Daisy,^' he said — “ a delusion like the rest 
of our dreams. Science has made an end of all such de- 
ceptions. The belief in a spirit-world was only possible 
while mankind remained densely ignorant of the world of 
sense.’’ 

I know now why you grow sadder as life goes on,” I 
said. “ It must be so hard to feel that you are treading a 
path that only leads to a dead wall. That there is no door 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


273 


iD the great, cruel wall, no beyond. Thank God, to mo it 
is harder to believe in extinction than in a world to come — 
a chain of worlds, if you will — a gradual ascent from this 
life, with all its sin and misery, to the higlicst form of life 
conceivable. The most elaborate of those systems which 
you call superstitions seems sim|)lier and easier for my un- 
derstanding than the barren creed of the materialist.^^ 

“ That is because you are young, Daisy, and full of en- 
thusiasm, and because you know very little of the world in 
which you are one happy atom — a joyous mote dancing in 
the sunshine. You think life is the gift of a beneficent 
Creator, who holds in reserve future lives, fairer than this, 
for those who believe in Him and obey Him. That pretty 
creed comes naturally enough to you who know life only at 
River Lawn and in Grosvenor Square; but go and look at 
life in Whitechapel, put yourself into the skin of the 
women you will see there, and then ask yourself about the 
beneficent Creator, the Eternal Wisdom, who has made 
man in His own image. Your rose-water theories would 
hardly be strong enough to stand that atmosphere. A 
Bradlaugh’s vitriol better suits the district.'’^ 

1 told him that it was an old, old argument that because 
there was so much misery in the world He who made it 
could not be a just God; or rather that there should be no 
directing mind above the universe, only unreasoning matter 
working out its own destiny upon material and immutable 
laws — that the God who could be moved to pity was the 
God of children and visionaries only. 

“You talk to me as if there had been no misery in my 
life,^^ I said. “ Do you forget what it was to me, in my 
happy childhood, to see the father I loved go out of this 
house one morning, and never see him again? Do you for- 
get what it was to me a year ago to hear the dreadful 
secret of his death. If 1 could rebel against the Power to 
which 1 have prayed ever since I knew what prayer meant,. 
1 should have rebelled then.'^ 

1 could not go on for the sobs that choked me at the 
thought of my father^s cruel death. Uncle Ambrose 
melted in a moment, and took me in his arms, just as he 
would have done years ago in one of my childish troubles, 
and pressed his lips upon my forehead with a kiss that 
seemed like a blessing. 

“ Believe, my dearest,^’ he said, “ keep always that uid 


274 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


qaestioniiig faith which is the gift of the pure in spirit. It 
is a second sight, Daisy. It is a sixth sense. It is given 
to the chosen few, God’s very elect. To them it is giveji 
to conceive and understand the unseen. They are the 
children of light. Be always of that happy race, Daisy. 
My reason has nothing to offer in exchange for your clair- 
voyance. Kemember always that if I could not help you 
tc belie’^<^^ — if I could not enter with you into the holy of 
holies, 1 never taught you to doubt.” 

“No, no. I have only known lately that you yourself 
were without the hope that has sustained mother and me 
in our dark hours.” 

He told me that 1 must not talk of dark hours— that for 
me life was to be all sunshine; and then, for the first lime, 
he spoke of his disappointment about Cyril and me — 
touching on the subject very lightly, and, indeed, not men- 
tioning his son’s name. 

“ A little hint of your mother’s has helped me to guess 
your secret, Daisy,” he said, “ and 1 love you too well to 
blame your inconstancy. Your mother and I both think 
that Mr. Florestan had something to do with the change 
in your sentiments.” 

“ Something to do with my finding out the truth about 
my own heart,” I said, “ and the nature of my mistake. 
I did not love Cyril less after I had seen Mr. Florestan, and 
found out somehow that he cared for me. But I knew all 
at once that my love for Cyril had never been the kind of 
love that would make me his happy wife. I found out that 
he could never be more to me than a dear and valued 
friend, never so much to me as you have been. He could 
never be the first; and one’s husband ought to he the first 
in one’s heart and mind, ought he not. Uncle Ambrose, as 
mother’s husband was?” 

I felt so sorry for my thoughtless words when I saw him 
wince at the mention of my father’s name. It was such a 
heartless thing to say— as if he were something less than a 
husband, as if he hardly counted in my mother’s life. I 
hung my head, deeply ashamed of myself, but feeling that 
any attempt to unsay what I had said would only make 
matters worse. And then again words can not alter the 
truth. He knows— he knows that my mother has never 
loved him as she loved her cherished dead; that the very 


WHOSE WAS The hand ? 


275 


mention of my father’s name can move a deeper feeling in 
her than all my step-father’s adoring tenderness. 

There was an awkward silence, and then Uncle Am- 
brose went on gravely and quietly, with infinite kindness. 

“ I want my pupil and adopted daughter to be happy, 
even if she can not be bound any nearer to me by a new 
tie. Don’t be afraid to trust me, Daisy. Remember I was 
your first friend — after your father and mother— and that 
you used to tell me all your thoughts and fancies. Try to 
be as frank to-day as you were in those happy hours when 
your doll used to sit in your lap and share your history 
lesson. You have some reason to believe that Mr. Flor- 
estan cares for you?” 

“ He told me so one day,” I faltered. “ I was alone in 
the summer-house in the shrubbery, alone with my books, 
jntending to spend a studious morning. Mr. Florestan 
found me there, and sat down and began to talk to me; 
and before I knew what was coming he told me that he 
was very fond of me, and that he was sure I did not care 
quite so much as I ought to care for Cyril; and he asked 
me to cancel my engagement and marry him. I was very 
angry with him, and I told him that he had no right to 
form any such opinion about my sentiments, and that noth- 
ing would induce me to break my promise to Cyril.” 

” Yet you did break your promise very soon afterward. 
How did you come to change your mind so speedily?” 

This was a searching question, and I felt that I was on 
dangerous ground. Cyril told me to let people suppose 
that 1 had broken our engagement; and to tell the truth 
would be to touch upon his secret, which he may have 
wished to keep from his father’s knowledge. 

“ Oh, the cancelment of our engagement arose on the 
spur of the moment,” 1 replied, carelessly. “ Cyril and I 
were of one opinion.” 

“ That is enough, child,” Uncle Ambrose answered, 
kindly; “ if Florestan is the chosen man, I think he ought 
to be informed of what has happened, and that the lady he 
loves is free. ” 

Oh, no, no, no, no!” I cried, in a great fright. “ lie 
mustn’t be told anything. Why, that would be like put- 
ting me up at auction. If he really cares for me his love 
will keep. If he rushes off to propose to somebody else — 
as I have heard of young men doing — that will only prove 


276 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


that his love vvasii^t worth liaviiig. Let him wait and find 
out for himself that I am not going to marry Cyril/'' 

“ What an arrogant young person you are; but 1 sup- 
pose you must have your own away/' said Uncle Ambrose; 
“ only remember, Daisy, that I want to see you happily 
married to the man of your choice before I die. 1 want to 
be sure that 1 have done all for your happiness that your 
own father could have done had he lived to bless you on 
your wedding-day." 

The deep grave tones of his voice, the solemn expression 
of his eyes as he turned them upon me, made my heart 
thrill with love and reverence. Yes, he is a good man, a 
man in whose character I have never discovered fault or 
flaw. 

“ You are not going to leave us for many a year to 
come," I said. “Indeed — indeed there is no reason that 
my marriage should be hurried on.^' 

“ Yes, Daisy, there is need. I want to see you happy. 
I want when I lie down on my bed for the last time and 
turn my face to the wall, to be able to say to myself, ‘ At 
least my little friend Daisy is happy; I have been her 
friend from the hour she learned to read at my knees until 
tlie hour 1 gave her to the husband of her choice. No 
father upon this earth could have been more careful of his 
daughter’s liappiness than I have been of hers.’ Perhaps 
in the last hours, when mind and senses grow dim, I may 
forget that my little pupil ever grew up to womanhood, I 
may think of you as a child still, flitting about the garden 
with streaming hair, I may not recognize the real Daisy 
when she looks at me with pitying eyes." 

These sad forebodings made me cry. I kissed Uncle 
Ambrose and tried to comfort him, and felt as fond of 
him as I used to be when I was a child. I was glad that 
the old feeling came back, for of late, though I know al- 
ways that he is my best friend, after my mother, we seem 
to have been growing further apart; and 1 have had a 
curious sense of apprehension wdien I have been in his 
company, as if there were some evil influence for me lurk- 
ing under the gloomy cloud which has darkened his life. 
To-day I felt only a great pity and a great love, the old 
confidence and affection which used to- fill my heart when 1 
ran across the lawn of a morinng to meet him as he came 
in at the gate. 1 pitied him, because I began to fear that 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


277 


the shadow that' rests upon him is the shadow of a closing 
life, and that it is some deep-rooted malady which makes 
him so joyless among onr happy surroundings. I fear that 
his own forebodings may be too surely realized, and that he 
will never see the epnet long spun-out days of a good old age. 
This thought made me very melancholy; yet it was a great 
relief to tind that he did not disapprove of Mr. Floreslan 
as a lover for me. Who knows? Mr. Florestaii may be 
as tickle as the inconstant moon; and all that impulsive 
nonsense of his in the arbor may be utterly forgotten on 
his part, though I remember every syllable. 1 wonder 
what he is doing in Scotland. I think he ought to have 
shot everything shootable by this time. 


CHAPTER xxin. 

WHERE THE GOLD CAME FROM. 

Don Diego Perez, more commonly spoken of in the 
T’arisian world as le rievx Fevez, or Perez Peru, was one 
of the best-known men in Paris; and yet he 1 ut raiely ap- 
peared in those haunts where the world of Paris most loves 
to congregate. In the haunts of pleasure he was almost a 
stranger. Ho hung about the side scenes of no Poulevard 
theater; he frequented not the race-courses of Longchamps 
or Auteuil. He sat late at his club playing whist; but the 
dull was quiet, and altogether out of the movement, and 
he was an unknown figure at those more fashionable clubs 
where fortunes are lost at baccarat. But there was one 
})lace where Senor Perez reigned supreme, where his name 
was a word of fear, his countenance an augury of gain or 
loss to thousands. That place was the Bourse. There 
Diego Perez was as a king among his fellow-men. 

He was a Spaniard by birth, though he had lived nearly 
half a century in Paris, or rather oscillated between Paris 
and Madrid during that period. He dealt oidy in Spanish- 
American securities, d'hat line was his specialty. There 
was not the most insignificant railway between the south- 
ernmost point of Patagonia and the mouth of the Amazon, 
between Buenos Ayres and Quito, there was not a silver, 
diamond, or copper mine within all that vast and varied 
expanse of territory, there was not a water company or an 
irrigation company or a company for making patent guano 
out of surplus paving-stones, the history and vicissitudes. 


278 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


the exact value or noii-value of which Diego Perez did not 
know by heart. That withered old finger of his had 
been in almost every financial pie which had been cooked 
upon that southern continent. He had been in at the 
death of more schemes than lie could have counted in a 
business morning. In the earlier stage of his career, before 
he was rich enough to eschew barefaced fraud, he had been 
in his own person chairman, board of directors, and advis- 
ing engineer of more than one railway which never reached 
a more tangible form of existence than the airy emanation 
of his own teeming brain. Many a scheme had lived, fad- 
ed, and expired within the limits of a prospectus, while 
Perez swept the mone}^ of the shareholders into his own 
capacious pocket. 

Don Diego had been only a coulissier in those days, but 
with the progress of time and the suppression of the privi- 
liges of those financial sharpshooters — the guerilla band of 
the noble army of speculators — the Spaniard had put on 
that electro-plate surface of honesty which very often 
passes as genuine metal in the world of speculation. In- 
vestors followed him and confided in him because of his 
reputation for acumen and good luck, rather than because 
they believed that the Diego Perez of to-day was altogether 
a different character from that Perez of thirty years ago 
about whom such queer stories were current. 

He had been given the soubriquet of Perez Peru because 
he was considered as deep and as rich as the deepest mine 
in that vast republic, and perhaps partly because his com- 
plexion had a tinge of that copper ore in which he had 
dealt so largely. As Perez Peru he was talked about re- 
spectfully even by the Tritons of the Bourse, and watched 
closely by the eager-eyed Minnows of that great mill, in 
which money and honor are ground into dust and ashes, 
and dust and ashes are ground back again into gold and 
good fame in a perpetual revolution of the same cruel 
wheel. 

The first ten yea’-s of Perez Peru’s financial career had 
been years of struggle and petty fraud. Petty fraud had 
failed to make him rich, and timid speculation had only 
served to keep him like Mohammed’s coffin in a middle-dis- 
tance between the luaven of wealth and the hell cl pov- 
erty. Then came his heroic period, which was short and 
sharp, holder speculation and more uncompromising chican- 


AVHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


279 


ery. Five years of this hazardous adventure, in which he 
escaped the ^^alleys only by the skin of his teeth, made him 
a capitalist, and tifteen years as a coulissier had educated 
him in the deepest secrets of finance. Tliere was not a 
trick of the Stock Exchange which Perez Peru had not at 
his fingers’ ends. He could stand idle, with his back 
against a stone pillar, and with his crafty southern eyes 
looking further into futurity than any other eyes in that 
crowded building. All that he touched after this period 
seemed to turn to gold. It turned to dross afterward, per- 
haps; but not till Senor Perez had passed it on to some- 
body else. He was never known to buy too soon or to hold 
too long. In a word, he was financial wisdom personified. 

In all the monotonous years in which the Stock Ex- 
change was his only temple, the share list his only Bible, 
Diego Perez had lived with an almost Spartan simplicity; 
not because he begrudged himself the cost of luxurious 
living, for personal expenditure, however profuse, would 
have hardly made a perceptible impression upon his in- 
come. He spent little, because he cared for making money 
and did not care for spending it. He had lived in the 
same house in the Hue Vivienne for the forty years of his 
Parisian life. The house was within a hundred yards of 
the Place de la Bourse, and it suited him. The only differ- 
ence that he had made in those forty years was to descend 
gradually from the scanty seclusion of a single garret to 
the space and comfort of the entire first floor. He had 
breakfasted at the Restaurant Ghampeaux during the 
greater part of the last thirty years. In his decade of pro- 
bation he had fed only in his attic, or in some cheap res- 
taurant on the Hive Gauche, where he wandered in the cool 
of the evening, thoughtful and solitary even before his 
thirtieth year. The man was the financial instinct incar- 
nate. The passion for abstract mathematics which pos- 
sesses some brains in his took the more vulgar form of 
money-getting; but the mathematical genius was there to 
a high degree, and some of his combinations were worthy 
of Newton or Laplace. 

For five-and- thirty years of his Parisian career Diego 
Perez had never been fouud guilty of a caprice. He was 
closely observed, as the representative of great wealth 
always is observed in an age which has Mammon for its 
master-devil; but he had never been surprised in any of 


280 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


(hose follies which sometimes diversify the lives of the 
wisest men. He had come to be looked upon as a money- 
making machine, inexorable as steel and adamant, work- 
ing always in the same grooves, relentless, unvarying; 
when all at once the report was circulated that Perez Peru 
had come back from Madrid with a “ harem,’'’ and for 
more than nine days Diego Perez’s harem was the stand- 
ing joke in the cafes where the Bourse was paramount. 
Diego Perez’s harem was the subject of a caricature in the 
most audacious of the little journals of Paris. Diego 
Perez’s harem was the theme of a comic song, almost as 
popular as the later “ Gendre de Monsieur Grevy. ” 

The harem, upon closer inquiry, was found to consist of 
three women whom Perez had established in a second floor 
in the Rue St. Guillaume. A mother and daughter, both 
handsome, the daughter eminently so; a cousin, plain and 
dowdy, or, if not absolutely plain, faded and elderly. 

The three women were seen one night in a box at the 
opera, the young beauty resplendent in amber satin and 
diamonds. Every lorgnette was turned to that box, and 
for the next three days all Paris talked of the dark beauty 
with the diamonds. 

“ She was wearing the wealth of Peru upon her neck 
and arms,” said the boursicofiers and their following. 

After this Dolores was rarely visible to the eye of all 
Paris. If she went to a theater or an opera, and she was 
but seldom allowed that privilege, she was made to sit deep 
in shadow, as closely curtained from the public gaze as if 
she had been the Pearl of Istamboul, chief light of some 
jealous pasha’s harem. 

Her story had but few elements of mystery, albeit her 
secluded life gave a flavor of the mysterious to her person- 
ality. She had been bargained for by Diego Perez as sor- 
didly as any Eastern slave that was ever sold in a public 
market-place. The girl and her mother had been living 
in poverty, in one of the obscurest quarters of the city, a 
region where the cholera fiend and the fever fiend find their 
choicest pasturage, where the reaper Death gathers his 
richest harvest. They had arrived in Madrid some ja^ars 
before with an appearance of ample means, and for a year 
or two Mine. Qaijada had occupied an apartment in a 
fashionable quarter, and had shown herself daily on the 
Prado, well-dressed, observed, and admired. She was 


WHOSE WAS THE HA HD ? 


281 


taken to be an adventuress and a free-lance; but no one 
troubled himself about her antecedents. The police had 
an eye upon her for the first few months, but could find 
nothing suspicious in her manner of life. ])olores was at 
a convent during the three or four years in which she grew 
from childhood to girlhood. It was the best educational 
establishment in the neighborhood of Madrid, and as the 
mother’s funds got low she pinched herself in order to pro- 
vide for her daughter’s board and education with the good 
nuns, who, albeit simplicity itself, had a talent for mak- 
ing out a bill of extra charges over and above the some- 
what heavy pension. 

Mme. Quijada was not alone during these years of her 
daughter’s education. Shortly after her arrival in the 
Spanish capital she was joined by a niece, who from that 
time shared her fortunes, good or bad. The niece was in- 
troduced to Mme. Quijada’s acquaintances as Louise Mar- 
cet, and she was said to have but recently recovered from 
a brain fever, which had seriously affected mind and mem- 
ory. Her aunt told her confidantes that this orphan niece 
of hers had been disappointed in love, and that the brain 
fever had been the outcome of her disappointment. How- 
ever true this may have been, it was beyond question that a 
more miserable-looking woman than Louise Marcet at this 
period could hardly be found on this planet, where if peo- 
ple sometimes take their pleasures sadly they very often 
take their griefs lightly. 

The time came when the widow’s cruse would hold out 
no longer, and it was necessary to withdraw l)olores from 
the fashionable convent. The good nuns affected a holy 
simplicity in their accounts, and they gave no credit. 

Dolores was now eighteen, beautiful, carefully educated, 
fairly accomplished. She went from the pure atmosphere 
and perfect comfort of a well-organized educatioiial estab- 
lishment to a shabby lodging in a sordid quarter. She 
went from all the refinements of life to all that is ugliest 
in the domain of poverty. The change was a shock which 
youthful selfishness felt keenly. Perhaps Mme. Quijada 
was not sorry that her daughter suffered from the misery 
of her surroundings. It might prepare her mind for the 
crisis to which her mother looked forward. 

Diego Perez was almost as well-known in Madrid as he 
was in Paris; and he was perhaps even more profoundly 


2S2 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


reverenced in the less wealthy capital. Mme. Quijada had 
tried to force herself upon his notice, but she had ap- 
proached him with a modesty which flattered his self-esteem. 
She had besought his counsel and assistance in certain little 
investments, so small in amount that the great financier 
was 2)rovoked to smile — he who so rarely smiled — at her 
simplicity. Such small investments had been his stepping- 
stones to fortune — such simple creatures as this shabby- 
genteel widow had put their little savings into those rotten 
enterprises of which Diego Perez had been both the daz- 
zling Alpha and the dark and cruel Omega. It was said 
in Paris that if you could squeeze Perez Peru's gold hard 
enough, blood would come out of it, by a lesser miracle 
than the squeezing of the blood of Christian martyrs out 
of the earth-floor of Nero^s amphitheater — the blood of 
broken-hearted widows, and starving orphans, the blood of 
the swindler’s dupes. 

The widow’s tongue was soft and insinuating, and for 
almost the first time in his life Perez was moved to a 
benevolent action. He lent the widow fifty louis to invest 
in an Argentine railway — lent fifty louis without security 
and without interest — but on second thought he insisted 
upon holding the scrip. 

“ Women are so short-sighted,” he said, after making 
this condition, “you would be selling at the lirst rise, 
’rhese shares are worth holding.” 

Mme. Quijada was in sore need of fifty louis, but it aid- 
ed a certain plan of hers that Senor Perrz should hold the 
stock. It gave her a right of approach to him. His 
image had dwelt in her mind ever since she came to Spain, 
as the image of wealth incarnate. She had dreamed htr 
dream about this rich lonely old man, and the hour for the 
realization of that dream was at hand. 

She wrote him a piteous letter about a fortnight after 
Dolores left the convent, telling him she was too ill to 
leave her wrettdied home, and she was in want of money. 
She believed that the dividend upon her Argentines was 
nearly due. It would only amount, she supposed, to a 
couple of louis, but forty francs would be something be- 
tween her wretched household and starvation. She had 
now three mouths to fill. Her daughter hud been with- 
drawn from the convent where she had grown up, and was 
sharing the discomforts of her wretched lodging. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


283 


Diego Perez was not given to acts of charity, and was 
not in the habit of caring whether his fellow-creatures 
dined or starved; but Mine. Quijada had contrived to im- 
press him with the idea that she was a remarkably clever 
woman, and that the world would be the poorer for her 
loss. She had flattered him with such subtle comprehen- 
sion of his character that he, who had been the mark of 
abject flattery for a quarter of a century, found himself 
listening with a pleased car to this gifted woman’s en- 
thusiastic laudation of his talents as a financier, and of 
that latent genius which would have made him greater as a 
politician or a diplomatist than he had ever been on the 
Stock Exchange. 

Had the flatterer been old and ugly, even feminine tact 
and subtlety might have failed to win his ear; but Mme. 
Quijada was still handsome and still young enough to seem 
attractive in the eyes of a man who had passed his sixtieth 
birthday. He was not in love with her; but he thought 
her a remarkably attractive woman, and instead of sending 
her fifty francs by his servant, he went himself to see in 
what kind of a den so much ability had found shelter. 

He went, saw Dolores in all the splendor of her fresh 
young beauty, and was conquered. He had never known 
what it was to feel his heart beat quicker at the sight of a 
woman’s face till he saw Mme. Quijada’s daughter. He 
was subjugated at once and forever. His instinct urged 
him to make as hard a bargain as he could with the girl’s 
mother; but the settlement to which he finally consented 
was more than princely. Princes are seldom so generous. 
Had Mme, Quijada insisted upon his sacrificing his last 
penny he would have done it sooner than lose the woman 
he loved. Had she insisted upon his marrying her daugh- 
ter he would have done it. Indeed, the chief consideration 
that prevented his offering to make Dolores his wife was 
his keen dread of ridicule, and the consideration that he 
could keep a mistress under closer surveillance than he 
could a wife. He knew that he was ugly and elderly, and 
that the girl he idolized could but be to him as a slave. 
He could not hug himself with the hope that he might 
some day win her heart. He was a cynic by long years of 
contempt for his fellow-men — by the habit of a life unsoft- 
ened by friendship or affection, by the love of kindred or 
care for the poor. He tried to rest content in his cynicism 


284 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


now; and he told himself that he was as well off as the 
mighty Shah Jehan, or any other Mohammedan potentate. 

He selected the Eiie St. Guillaume as a neighborhood 
remote from the gay and popular Paris of the Boulevards 
and the Kue de Rivoli, in which the casual English and 
American visitor delights, far also from tlie Champs 
Elysees and the Parc Monceaux, with their residential 
population of fashionable artists, and bohemians of all 
kinds. The Rue St. Guillaume was old-fashioned, sober, 
and eminently respectable. He chose a suite of apart- 
ments in a grave old house, with an inner quadrangle — a 
house so grave and silent that the stone quadrangle might 
have been a cloister. He furnished the rooms with a som- 
ber luxuriousness, and he offered the cage to his, snared bird 
with an air of devoted submission which might have be- 
guiled her into forgetfulness of the bars which shut her in 
from all the outer world. Upon Mine. Quijada he imposed 
the duty of keeping guard over his sultana. The girPs 
lightest whim was to be studied and indulged, so long as 
that whim did not lead to the gay outer world and its 
frivolous associations. Dolores was to be a queen; but her 
kingdom was to be within stone walls. She was only to 
take air and exercise under conditions of supreme pru- 
dence. She was never to flaunt her beauty in the Bois de 
Boulogne at the fashionable hour of the day; but Mme. 
Quijada had a carriage at her disposal in which she might 
drive in the less frequented suburbs of Paris, or in the Bois 
at an hour when all Paris was elsewhere. These restric- 
tions were hard upon a girl of eighteen, newly emancipated 
from the monotonous rules and regulations of a convent- 
school, and panting for liberty. 

“ El Santo Oorazon was a prison,’^ she complained, 
“ but at least I had plenty of fellow-prisoners. This is 
solitary confinement.^^ 

She chafed bitterly against the dreariness of her life, and 
she detested the man who had made himself her master; 
but her mother’s stronger character had acquired com- 
plete dominion over her, and she had neither strength of 
will nor courage to rebel against her chains. She sub- 
mitted to her fate. She wore the costly jewels which were 
her badge of slavery; she gratified her girlish fancy in sur- 
rounding herself with the loveliest flowers that the south 
sent to Paris; and she might, perhaps, have grown recoil- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


285 


oiled to her position, and with but slightest persuasion 
might have induced Diego Perez to give her the name and 
status of wife, if she had not been so unhappy as to fall in 
love with her cousin, Leon Duverdier. 

During the first year of her residence in Paris, Duverdier 
was a frequent visitor in his aunt^s salon. He was about 
forty years of age, handsome, audacious, plausible, more 
seductive in his riper years than a younger lover would 
have been, because more ex ‘ ’ he artifices that 



fascinate a romantic girl. 


returned from 


Spanish America, where he had been liviiig a roving and 
adventurous life, now in one state, now in another, making 
money no one knew exactly how, but a familiar figure at 
the gaming-tables of every city in which he had his habita- 
tion. 

He came to Paris, set up his laboratory, and described 
himself as an experimentalist and inventor on the high- 
road to great and useful discoveries. Perez knew of the 
relationship between Duverdier and the Quijadas, and had 
met Duverdier on the Bourse; but he did not know that 
this handsome cousi?i was a frequent visitor in the Rue St. 
Guillaume, since the younger man’s visits were always so 
timed as to avoid the master of the prison-house. Had it 
been otherwise the old man’s jealousy would have been 
quick to take alarm. 

In her utter ignorance of life, Dolores turned to her 
cousin as the representative of all that is most fascinating 
and most interesting in the outer world. His flashy and 
superficial cleverness passed as the versatility of a born 
genius; she believed all that he told her of his scientific 
day-dreams, and accepted his inchoate experiments as the 
first stages in the career of greatness. He was just young 
enough and just handsome enough to win the heart of a 
girl who had no opportunity of comparing him with more 
distinguished men. It was the policy of his life to make 
love to every pretty woman who would listen to him, and 
he had even condescended to fascinate ugly women who 
were likely to be of use to him. He had gone through life, 
from his eighteenth year upward, basking in the smiles of 
beauty, and relying upon the favor of the gentler sex to 
carry him safely over the obstacles in the adventurer’s road 
though life. Was it likely, then, that he would neglect 
his opportunities with Dolores, a lovely an I inexperienced 


286 WHOSE W'AS THE HAND? 

girl who had the commaud of one of the deepest purses in 
Paris? 

He had too holy a fear of his aunt to approach his cousin 
in the guise of the seducer, but he contrived to win her 
affections, as if unawares, and she was perhaps all the more 
blindly in love with him because he had never asked her for 
her heart. He always affected to respect her relations with 
Perez, and he told her bluntly that her mission in life was 
to make the financier her husband. 

“It is your own fault that the marriage has not come 
off ages ago,” he said; and then, when the girl answered 
him only with a deep sigh, it was his task to console her, 
his task to talk of the happiness which might have been 
had his lot in life been different. 

“ I am little better than a pauper,” he told her, “ and 
my life is full of bitter memories. No woman who values 
her own happiness should link her lot with mine.” 

Dolores pondered over that phrase, “ bitter memories,” 
and she interpreted it after her own fancy, which told her 
that LeoiPs youth had been blighted by some dark love 
story, a tale of fatal passion and broken hearts such as she 
was readijig about daily in the novels which were her chief 
recreation. 

There were times when he talked, in dark hints and un- 
finished sentences, of his past experiences— the women who 
had loved him and broken their hearts for him; the one 
woman, beautiful, high-placed, a star of loftiest magni- 
tude, whom he had loved, and in vain. 

The girl listened and believed, weak as water, loving 
him all the more because her love was unreturned. He 
was full of tenderness for her by fits and starts; but he 
gave her to understand that he could never again love as 
he had loved that great lady who had filing away name, 
country, home, and reputation for his sake, and who had 
died a tragical death in the morning of their love. 

Duverdier’s visits tothelvue St. Guillaume had not been 
altogether disinterested. He had gone there in times of 
financial difficulty, ajid he had extorted more than one so- 
called loan from Mme. Quijada, and had obtained several 
smaller sums of money, freely and gladly given, from 
Dolores, who had never been intrusted with the command 
of large sums, and who dared not part with a single jewel 
from among Perez Peru’s splendid gifts^ as he had a 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 287 

troublesome way of passing her diamonds in review every 
now and then. 

He would write to her some morning to tell her that he 
was going to dine with her in the evening, and that he 
would like to see her in black velvet and diamonds, and 
the girl shrewdly suspected that this was only his manner 
o£ assuring himself that she had made away with none of 
his gifts. These magnificent gems had often passed under 
Duverdier^s hands. He had sat in eager contemjfiation of 
their pure white brightness as they lay in their open cases 
on the table before him. 

“ They are worth a fortune, Dolores,^^ he said, “ but 
they are of very little use to you — of less use than toys to 
a child. The child can amuse itself with the toys, but you 
can do nothing with the diamonds. It is not worth the 
trouble of wearing them when there is nobody to admire 
you.'’’ 

“Oh, but they are very pretty,” the girl answered, 
childishly, “ and 1 like to have them. Perez told me that 
there are only about half a dozen women in Paris who have 
such diamonds, and they are all great ladies.” 

“ Perez told you a lie,” her cousin answered, brutally. 
“ What of the rich Americans, the men whose money has 
been made in pork or petroleum, and who give their wives 
diamonds of six times the value of yours. Perez is a hum- 
bug.” 

Ho shut the case with a sharp snap. Those diamonds 
always made him angry. The thought of all that money 
locked up in velvet and morocco, or shining upon the neck 
and arms of a girl, aggravated him to madness. Ho was 
always in want of money. He had had a run of luck on 
occasions, and had rioted for a brief space in the possession 
of wealth; but it was the wealth of to-day, not of to-mor- 
row, and the next turn of luck had lefo him penniless. 

He looked at those diamonds on his cousin’s neck with 
hungering eyes, and the thought of them haunted him in 
his dreams. The image of that waxen neck haunted him 
too; and he saw it sometimes with one cruel hand upon it, 
holding it as in an iron vise, while another hand tore off 
that dazzling necklace. 

Whose was the hand? 

Once in a distempered dream he saw the same fair neck 
streaming with blood. He hurried to the Kue St. Giiil- 


288 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


]aume next morning as soon as he was up and dressed, 
almost expecting to hear of a calamity; but nothing evil 
had happened. Dolores met him with a smile, surprised 
at such an early visit. 

“ I had a horrid dream about you/^ he said, and she saw 
that he was ghastly pale. “ Where do you keep your 
jetvels?"'’ he asked later, when they had been talking of in- 
different subjects. 

“Oh, that is mother^s business. She has all sorts of 
contrivances for taking care of them.'’^ 

“ Dm afraid, in spite of all her contrivances, yoidll be 
robbed some day,’"’ Leon answered, moodily. 

Yes, she would be robbed, he told himself. Some vulgar 
thief would get to know of the wealth that was stowed away 
ill those dull old rooms — wealth in its most precious and 
portable form — and he, her cousin, who had such need of 
a share in the old financier’s spoil, would be told that those 
jewels had vanished as swiftly and silently as if some wicked 
fairy had changed them into withered leaves. 

Mme. Quijada did all she could to discourage her 
nephew’s visits, but some reason, known only to herself, 
restiained her from actually shutting her door against him, 
and Dolores always welcomed him gladly, appear how and 
when he might. If he was moody she sympathized with 
him, pitying griefs he did not take the trouble to explain. 
If he was rude she bore with his rudeness. For her he was 
just that one man upon earth who could do no wrong. 
Fate and Fortune were to blame for using him badly. 
Love is fertile in excuses for the beloved. 

It was now nearly four months since she had seen him. 
A brief note had told her that he was leaving Paris; that 
he was likely to be a wanderer upon the earth, and that it 
might be years before they met again. She was in despair 
at this cruel farewell, and sent her mother to his lodgings 
to find out what had become of him. On her first visit 
Mme. Quijada heard only the same statement that had 
been made to the officer of police, but on going, a month 
later, she found the nest despoiled. The law had made a 
clearance of all M. Duverdier’s effects, at the suit of his 
chief creditor. The apartment was to be let, and nobody 
knew or cared what had become of its late occupant. 

The cliange in Dolores after her cousin’s disap[)earance 
was too obvious to escape the keen eye of Perez. He had 


WHOSE WAS THR HAND? 


389 


alvvavs known that she did not care for him; I hat she sub- 
mitted to her slavery as a fate which she was too weak to 
struggle against; that she loved ease and luxury, jewels 
and flowers too well to run away from her giJcled nest into 
that bleak world of the hewers of wood and drawers of 
water, that hard world which to her ignorance must have 
seemed as terrible as the wilderness to the dwellers in cities. 
He knew that he held her by the most sordid of ties— the 
love of wealth and the fear of penury. He had seen her 
listless, weary, indifl'erent; but he had never until lately 
seen her absolutely unhappy; and jealous suspicions were 
soon aroused by that inexplicable change. He suspected 
an intrigue of some kind, and set a private detective to 
watch the house in the Rue St. Guillaume; but the man 
discovered nothing. No suspicious person was seen to ap- 
proach the house, nor did Mile. Quijada ever go out alone. 
He questioned her closely. He told her that he w'as sure 
she had some secret grief, and he urged her to confide in 
him. She protested that there was nothing the matter. 
She was tired of Paris. That was all. Her life w^as monot- 
onous enough to make any one unhappy. He had no need 
to look further for the cause of her pallor or her low 
spirits. 

“ 1 am going to Madrid next week. Will you go with 
me?’^ asked Perez. 

“ Yes, yes; I shall be delighted. 

Her face lighted up with pleasure. She gave her master 
one of those rare smiles, which repaid him for the richest 
gift he could oft'er her. She became full of life and gayety. 

Slie was thinking that Leon had most likely gone to 
Madrid, and that she would find him there. She could 
not be in the same city with him, and yet not contiive to 
draw him to her house, she thought. She would make her 
mother hu?it him out for her, even if she herself were 
allowed only to change one prisqn for another. 

Her whole manner changed. ■ She became gay and talk- 
ative, and discussed the journey. How soon would they 
start? She was dying to go. 

“ You want to see your old school-mates, I suppose?’^ 
said Perez; “ to make them envious of your jewels and 
your beauty.^'’ 

“ Yes, yes, 1 want to see them all again, she answered, 
carelessly. 


10 


290 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


“But I can not have yon gadding about Madrid any 
more than about Paris/^ said Perez. “ One city is almost 
as wicked as another.’^ 

“Mother can go and find my old companions. They 
may come to see me, I suppose?” 

“ Surely, Dolores, you would not receive any of your 
convent comrades in your position?” said her mother, 
severely. “ Do you forget that to those girls, honored 
and happy wives, perhaps, now, you would seem an out- 
cast. They would have nothing to say to you.” 

Perez looked embarrassed. It was the first direct attack 
that Mme. Quijada had ever made upon him in the guise 
of an injured parent. The bargain he had made with her 
had been arranged upon purely commercial principles — 
honor so much — maternal affection so much— beauty so 
much. Even the injured feelings of the defunct Quijada, 
who might in some distant planet be aware of what was 
happening here, had been considered. The sum-total had 
been large, and Perez was therefore unprepared, for an on- 
slaught from an aggrieved mother. 

Dolores shrugged her shoulders, and gave an impatient 
sigh. She was not endowed with the feelings, and cared 
very little whether the link that bound her to a master she 
hated was or was not sanctioned by Holy Church. The 
good opinion of the world would not compensate for an 
alliance with age and ugliness. 

“ Your diamonds must go to my office while we are 
away,” said Perez, after an embarrassed pause. “ 1 have 
burglar-proof safes there which will accommodate all your 
jewel-cases. I will take them away with me to-morrow, 
and lock them up with my own hand.” 

“ And what am I to wear while I am in Spain?” 

“ Oh, you want to astonish your old friends, I suppose. 
Well, keep the sapphires I gave you a little time ago, and 
a few of your smaller trinkets. The diamonds must be 
made secure before we start. It would he dangerous to 
travel with jewels of such value.” 

“Duchesses carry their diamonds everywhere,” saic 
Dolores. 

“And duchesses often get robbed—sometimes by their 
husbands, sometimes by their servants, and occasionally by 
professional thieves. You had better take my advice in 
this matter.’’ 


WHOSE WAS THE HAKD ? 


m 

Dolores submitted with an air of indifference, and Perez 
departed, promising to fetch the jewel-cases on the follow- 
ing day. 

He came and was told that Dolores was too ill to see 
him. She had changed her mind. She did not care about 
going to Madrid — the possibility of meeting people who 
had known her in her innocent girlhood was hateful to 
her. This was the gist of what Mine. Quijada told him, 
with much circumlocution, and with some tears wrung 
from a mother’s wounded heart. 

Seeing that he listened to her reproaches with patience, 
and that there was an expression of real distress in his 
withered old face. Mine. Quijada pursued the subject still 
further. He was breaking her daughter’s heart, she told 
him. He could see her drooping and dying by inches in 
that dismal prison-house — the sense of a false position, to 
a girl brought up in the convent of El Santo Corazon, was 
unendurable. Diamonds were as dross, material comforts 
were of no account. The blighted breath of dishonor had 
passed over the fair young life, and it was slowly withering 
av/ay. 

Perez heard and pondered. He idolized Dolores, and 
there was positively no reason against his marrying her, 
except his keen dread of ridicule, the idea of being laughed 
at by all Paris as the wealthy dotard with a girl-wife — the 
fear that if she were once his wife she would insist upon 
daunting her beauty in the full glare of the wickedest city 
in the world, or that city which seemed so to him. 

“If I wore to marry her she would lead me a wretched 
life,” he said, after some meditative pacings about the 
spadous salon; “she would take advantage of her power 
as a wife — she would plunge into the vortex of dissi[)ation 
— she would drag my name in the mud, perha[)S. ” 

“ You have known her long enough to know liovv simple 
her ideas are, how easily she is contented.” 

“ That is all very well now that she is under resiraint. 
How can 1 tell what she would be if she had the authority 
of a wife?” 

“ Keep her as a slave, then, and let her fade and die. 
Do not reproach me when the end comes.” 

There was much more to the same purpose, and the re- 
sult was total surrender upon the part of Diego Piutz. He 
would marry Dolores at the Mairie as soon as the law 


20 ’} 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


allowed. All he stipulated was that she should continue to 
lead a life remote from the crowds and amusements of 
fashionable Paris. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

A GLOOMY EETROSPECT. 

Diego Perez and his beautiful wife started for Madrid 
upon the evening after their marriage. They traveled 
with all the comfort that wealth can give. Dolores had 
her mother and her maid as dueiuia and attendant. They 
went to the best hotel in Madrid, where, at the instigation 
of his wife and mother-in-law, Perez engaged the hand- 
somest suite of rooms upon the first floor. 

His dread of ridicule, his jealous doubts and suspicions, 
prompted him to hide the treasure that he had won for 
himself; but some natural pride intervened, and he could 
not refrain from showing himself in the fashionable drives 
and promenades with his lovely young wife by his side. 
Gradually it became known to all the financial world of 
Madrid that the beautiful girl who went about with Diego 
Perez was actually his wife, and visits of ceremony and 
congratulation became frequent in the amber satin salon 
an premier. 

Mme. Perez accepted the situation with perfect equa- 
nimity, and showed to better advantage as a wife than as a 
beautiful bird in a gilded cage. If she was not happy she 
was at least better contented with herself and her life than 
she had been in the Rue St. Guillaume. So far from re- 
penting his marriage Perez grew daily more devoted to his 
wife and more anxious to make her happy. He submitted 
to all Mine. Q.uijada’s exactions, and allowed himself to 
be led by the nose by his mother-in-law as well as by his 
wife; and in this happy disposition he returned to Paris, 
where he at once occupied himself in the task of selecting 
a fitting home for the lovely young wife of a millionaire. 

Everybody whom he knew in Paris had heard of his mar- 
riage, and he had to endure the congratulations of his 
acquaintances, which, as he was particularly shy, were 
agony to him. He also had to endure a good many sly 
thrusts in the papers, and more than one caricature of “ La 
belle et la bete;’^ but he bore it all, and after a week or 
two consented to mount an elegant victoria with a pair of 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


293 


matchless blacks, and to sliow’^ himself in the Bois at (he 
fashionable hour. A coupe was being built for Dolores, 
and a second pair of bkcks was being looked for, Mme. 
Quijada and her daughter being of opinion (hat a stable to 
be (lutiuyKe must be all of one color. 

After looking at a good many houses Perez finally de- 
cided upon one in the somewhat solitary Avenue Reiff- 
sohossen, which had been built for a famous actress during 
the palmy days of the Empire — the avenue being then 
known as the Avenue Hortense — and which was at least a 
mile from the Arc du Triornphe. The house stood at 
some distance from the road, a'ld was concealed by a thick 
screen of acacias and olher ornamental trees and shrubs. 
The garden had been carefully laid out, and the slables 
had been the particular care of the first pro])rietor, who 
was a connoisseur in equine arrangements. This Italian 
villa, with its grounds and dependencies, had cost a fort- 
une, but it was offered to Diego Perez for about a fourth 
part of the original cost. He liked the property, in the 
first place because it was a bargain, and in the second [)lace 
because its solitary position gratified his idea of retirement 
with the wife of his choice. He did not want to live in the 
heart of Paris, where Dolores might be encouraged to set 
up a salon, and where the men he knew might fiiid it too 
convenient to visit his handsome wife. That solitary 
Italian villa, with its screen of foliage, inconveniently re- 
mote from the busy haunts of men, was the very home he 
desired. 

Dolores and her mother both admired the house, and 
both complained of its surroundings. The neighborhood 
was a desert. It was on the wrong side of the Bois for 
fashion and beauty. Like all bargains, the property was 
hardly worth having. 

For once in a way Perez was resolute with his charmer. 
He would buy that house and no other. 

“ If you would rather go on living in the Rue St. Guil- 
laume,’^ he said, “ I won’t interfere.” 

“ I detest the Rue St. Guillaume,” replied Dolores, petu- 
lantly, so the Italian villa in the Avenue de ReifIschossen 
was bought, and Dolores was allowed to furnish the new 
house after her own fancy, and without any consideration 
of cost. Only in one matter did her husband exercise his 
authority, and that was in the choice of the household. 


204 : 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


All the servants were engaged by him at an office in Paris; 
but he allowed Louise Marcet to assist him in his choice, 
and to be present during the negotiations. She was to be 
lijusekeeper in the new villa, having shown a talent for 
management ai]d economy in the Eue St. Guillaume. 
Mnie. Quijada was allowed to choose her own suite of 
apartments on the ground floor, in a wing beyond the piin- 
(jipal rooms, which were vestibule, dining, and billiard- 
room. Dolores had her boudoir, bedroom, dressing and 
bath-room on the upper or noble floor, while her husband 
had a corresponding set of rooms on the same flour. There 
were two smalt rooms at the back of lire house, divided 
only by a narrow passage from the suite occupied by 
Dolores, and these were appropriated to Mile. Marcet, as 
sitting-room and bedroom. A servants^ staircase at the 
end of the passage brought her in close rapport wilh Iho 
offices below, and enabled her to exercise a useful surveil- 
lance upon the household. The servants^ bedrooms were 
on an upper story, almost hidden by the classic ornamenta- 
tion of the roof. 

An open loggia divided the apartments of the master and 
mistress of the house, and formed a means of communi- 
cation in summer-time, and a neutral ground where hus- 
band and wife might meet in their idle hours. Dolores 
was full of plans for decorating this loggia in an Oriental 
st}’le so soon as spring and summer should revisit the land. 
A Parisian winter did not promise much enjoyment from 
an open loggia, however architectural and Italian. 

The installation in the villa took place very quietly, 
though both mother and daughter had suggested a ball, or 
at least an evening party, in honor of the pendaison de la 
(r(h)iaillere. Perez reminded them that they knew scarcely 
half a dozen people in Paris, and asked where their guests 
were to come from if they were to give a party. 

“ Madame Perez has only to hold up her linger in order 
to All her salon, replied Madame Quijada, with dignity, 
“ or in other words, you have but to say to one of the best- 
known Parisians at your club, ‘ My wife is going to give a 
party, and I want you to send out two or three hundred 
cards of invitation on her part,’ and the thing is done. 
We shall give music, supper, and wines that pfO[)le will 
talk of for a week; and after that everybody in Paris will 
want to come to the Villa Perez.” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


295 


“ A very excellent way of squandering money and court- 
ing discomfort/^ answered Perez, tartly. “ I bought the 
villa for my wife and myself, and not for all Paris. 

“ I foresee that we shall be as dismal here as we were in 
the Rue St. Gillaume,^^ sighed Mme. Quijada, who did 
not forego a mother-in-law’s privileges of saying disagree- 
able things. 

Finding that society was still forbidden fruit, Mme. 
Quijada sunk into a slough of sensuous pleasures, and re- 
joiced in the luxurious surroundings, her daughter’s cor- 
don bleu, and her son-in-law’s wine cellar. She began to 
regard the midday dejeuner and the seven-o’clock dinner 
as the two chief events of the day. She did ample justice 
to the produce of Burgundy and Bordeaux, nor did she 
ever forego the dainty goblet of Chartreuse or Cura9oa, 
which marked the close of the meal — a minature goblet 
from which Titania herself might have drunk, only Titania 
would hardly have refilled the glass so often. In the after- 
noon Mme. Quijaila enjoyed her siesta in true Spanish fash- 
ion. In the evening she was more alert, and played ecarte 
with her daughter for small stakes, which she generally 
won. If Dolores would not play there was always the 
soujfre douleur Louise, who had the whole charge of the 
household on her shoulders, and who had to please three 
jieople who constituted the family. Mme. Quijada had 
given over the entire duty of housekeeping to her niece, and 
rarely rose from her easy-chair except to drive out in her 
daughter’s victoria, or to go to a theater in the luxurious 
coupe, when Perez was disinclined to escort his wife. 

Nothing had been heard of Leon since his disappearance, 
and his aunt’s most earnest hope was that she would never 
see his face or hear his name again. There were episodes 
in her life which she wanted to forget, now that she had 
attained to that respectability which wealth can give in a 
moment to the most doubtful antecedents. It was in 
search of oblivion that she filled and refilled the little Vene- 
tian goblet after dejeuner or dinner; and there were times 
when she felt that all the Chartreuse the good monks ever 
distilled would hardly be strong enough to drown certain 
haunting memories. 

Perez Peru noted his worthy mother-in-law’s indulgence 


296 WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 

in the pleasure of the table, and remarked upon it to his 
wife. 

“ If you don^t look after her better she^ll take to drink- 
ing,’’ he said one evening as they drove to a boulevard 
theater, leaving Mme. Quijada sitting opposite Louise at the 
little card table, with flushed cheek and glittering eye. 

“ Bah! if she has just une pointe now and then it can’t 
matter,” replied Dolores, carelessly. “ Her- dinner is the 
only thing that amuses her. You won’t let us give par- 
ties, or know any amusing people. You have banished 
even the poor old Duturques. They were dull, but they 
were alive, and they were better company than chairs and 
tables. ” 

“You are very ungrateful, Dolores,” Perez answered, 
with a piteous look. “ I have refused you nothing, except 
to change my manner of life. I have always loved soli- 
tude, and hated strange faces. I should not be a millionaire 
if I had not possessed the power of self -concentration, of 
living on my own thoughts.” 

“ But now you are a millionaire — and three times a mill- 
ionaire — you ought to enjoy life.” 

“ To enjoy life is to live quietly with you — to have you 
all to myself, not to see you surrounded with young people, 
who would despise your old husband, and teach you to de- 
spise him. You talk about giviiig balls, Dolores. Can 
you not conceive what a torture it would be to me; to see 
you dancing with young men — handsome, fascinating, un- 
principled, relentless in their pursuit of the women they 
admire? Men who would talk of you at their clubs, com- 
pare you with the vilest of your sex, discuss your every 
charm — lay wagers about you — as to who should be your 
favored lover, and how soon you could be persuaded to dis- 
lionor your husband. I could not endure to see you ad- 
mired, knowing what admiration means among the young 
libertines I meet at my club. You can not understand 
what an old man’s love is, Dolores — how jealous, how ex- 
acting. You forget how poor a recompense age ever gets 
for its devotion to youth.” 

“ I don’t mean to be ungrateful,” Dolores answered, 
with a deep sigh, and then she turned her head away from 
her husband, and studied the passing carriages, the 
flaneurs upon the broad asphalt pavement, the glitter and 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 2^)7 

splendor of the shop windows, shops that seemed designed 
only for the accommodation of millionaires. 

She was going to the theater in all her glory of jewels, 
diamond stars in her hair, a necklace of single stones, each 
gem worth a rosiere's dower, diamond serpents in single, 
double, and treble coils winding up her slim round arm. 
She wore a simple evening toilet of some black gauzy 
material, but the Chantilly lace upon her gown was only 
second in value to the gems on her neck. When a beauti- 
ful young woman marries age and ugliness the least she 
can do to assert the claims of beauty is to spend her hus- 
band’s money royally. 

The theater was the Ambigu, where a new comedy of 
Sardou’s had just made a hit, and where all Paris was 
crowding nightly. Dolores was amazed when she found 
that the box her husband had secured for her was only a 
small one on the pit tier, where neither her beauty nor 
her diamonds could be adequately seen. He had his old 
fancy for these shadowy little boxes, where it pleased him to 
hide his enchantress from the vulgar eye, but in spite of 
these jealous precautions Mme. Perez was already known 
and talked about as la helle aux diamants. 

Her husband’s reputation as a triple millionaire gave a 
special interest to her jewels. People gloated upon gems 
which might have cost half a million, if Perez pleased. 

He could have spent half a million, reduced his fortune 
by a sixth, without feeling any poorer. “ He could make 
as much in a week if he chose to start a new mine,” said 
jidneurs on the Bourse. “ He has but to write a pros- 
pectus, and the money pours in like water. He has a 
Golconda in his ink pot.” 

While Perez and his wife were laughing at Sardou’s bit- 
ing wit, Mme. Quijada was winning Louise Marcet’s half 
francs by her astute and studied play. Louise took no in- 
terest in the game — indeed hated all games of cards— and 
only played as a part of her duty in that house where she 
was the shadow of everbody else’s sunshine. 

They had played nearly an hour and a half when the 
elder woman threw down the cards with an impatient 
sigh instead of dealing them. 

“ We have played long enough for to-night, Louise; 1 
am tired of winning such miserable stakes. How ghastly 


298 


WHoaE WAS THE HaKD ? 


the silence of this house is! Nothing but the tick, tick, 
tick of that clock on the mantel-piece, and the crackling 
of the logs now and then. You may get me a finger of 
fine champagne. 1 feel very low to-night. This house is 
killing me. 

“You ought tp be much easier in your mind now that 
your daughter has been placed in an honorable position — 
now that your conscience is at peace upon her account,^^ 
said Louise, gravely. 

“ My conscience! DonT preach to me about conscience. 
I have done with all superstitious bugbears. I finished 
with them before 1 left Marseilles. I have never entered a 
church since my marriage. I was overdosed with religion in 
my girlhood. I married a clever man, who soon taught 
me to laugh at the old fables.^’ 

“ And you were happier, do you think, for abandoning 
the old pathways:^ ^ asked Louise, gravely, arranging the 
cards, with her eyelids cast down, as if she hardly liked to 
meet her aunt’s eyes while she spoke of sacred things. 

“ Happier! Happy — happier — happiest! Those are 
idle words, child. 1 don’t believe anybody is happy. 1 
don’t believe in the existence of happiness.” 

“ Oh, you are wrong, aunt! There are moments, 
hours, days in this life perfectly and beautifully happy — 
days to which one looks back afterward as to a dream of 
heaven — days to which one looks forward after death, hop- 
ing that God will give us back that happiness in heaven. 
Those brief days are balanced by long years of misery; but 
they have been — they have been. There is nobody on this 
earth who has not once been happy. The word is not an 
idle invention.” 

“ Well, I suppose I was happy in my time — happy that 
Easter night when Quijada followed me home from the 
church door, and talked to me, while my mother walked 
on ahead with my elder sister, your mother, little suspect- 
ing that I had an admirer making love to me under cover 
of the darkness. He was only clerk to an avoue, but those 
who knew anything about him said that he was one of the 
cleverest young men in Marseilles, and as my parents were 
only small shopkeepers they did not make any objections 
to my marrying him. We had only a couple of rooms to 
live in, and thirty francs a week to live upon; but it was 
all bright enough for the first year; and then — and then, I 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


299 


found out things about my clever yoiing husband. There 
was more money, but it wasn’t come by very honestly; and 
we had to leave Marseilles one night in secret, never to go 
back there. We came to Paris, of course — everybody 
comes to Paris— and Dolores was born in a little street 
near St. Germain I’Auxerois, where we struggled on some- 
how till the end came for my husband — the bitter, cruel 
end. Are you ever going to get me that mouthful of 
cognac?” 

“Yes, yes, aunt; but indeed you would be better with- 
out it.” 

“ How dare you dictate to me? I am sick and faint with 
thinking of my wretched past. Get me some cognac this 
instant!” 

Louise left the room and returned with a tiny carafe 
and Titania’s Venetian goblet. She did all she could to 
discourage lii r aunt’s growing propensity for alcohol, but 
she was only a dependent. She might remonstrate, but 
she was compelled to obey. 

“ He was arrested at a low dancing place, among men 
and women of the vilest character, men who are like bad 
women, women who were like vicious men,” pursued Mme. 
Quijada, eagerly helping herself to the cognac with tremu- 
lous hand. 

“ AVhy dwell upon those by-gone troubles? I know all 
the sad story.” 

“It does me good to talk — anything is better than the 
silence of this ghastly room — white and gold — so white, so 
cold and cheerless, like a room meant for ghosts. It was 
a relief to talk of what I suffered in those days. He was 
arrested for robbery, swindling, a long series of frauds, and 
he was taken to prison. I never saw him alive again. He 
hanged himself at day-break, within two hours of his 
arrest, hanged himself with a silk handkerchief upon the 
iron bar of the prison grating before he had even been ex- 
amined by i]iQ juge d’ instruction ^ and before his jailers 
thought it necessary to take any special precautions 
against suicide.” 

“You were much to be pitied, aunt,” said Louise, 
quietly putting away the neat little boxes of cards. 

She had heard the story of her aunt’s marriage very 
often of late, for Mme. Quijada had grown more loquacious 
in proportion as she indulged in alcohol. She did not talk 


300 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


of these things to Dolores, who had been brought up in 
ignorance of her father’s character, had, indeed been 
brought up to believe that the defunct Quijada was the 
scion of a noble Andalusian family, whereas the lawyer’s 
clerk of Marseilles was the son of a pettifogging lawyer, 
and the name Quijada had been only adopted by Dolores’ 
mother when she went to Madrid. She found the name in 
a volume of Cervantes which she opened at random. 

“ Oh! I have had a dreadful life, Louise. I have been 
surrounded by criminals,” cried Mme. Quijada, after two 
or three little glasses. 

“ Don’t talk of it, aunt,” repeated her niece, with a 
sudden vehemence. “ You ought to be wiser than to talk to 
me of the past, knowing how much I have suffered — knowing 
that I shall never cease to suffer from that bitter memory, 
that the very presence of that man in the room stifles me. 
I can not breathe when he is near me. I feel as if I must 
fall upon him and kill him, as he killed — ” 

“ Hush, hush!” cried her aunt, looking apprehensively 
toward the door. “You are right. We ought never to 
talk of the past. It is dangerous — dangerous in every way. 
Heaven be praised, we have not heard of your brother in 
six months. We may never hear of him again.” 

“ Ah! I always dread him most, after an interval of 
absence. He will reappear as he reappeared before — or, if 
not, we shall read of some crime that has been committed 
in some foreign city, and we shall know that it is his work. 
He has neither heart nor conscience. Can I ever forget, 
do you think, how he killed the man I idolized — the best 
and most generous of men? Can I ever forget how he 
used my name — name forever more hateful to me — as a 
lure to draw that good, brave man to his death? And yet 
he dares to come into a room where I am — he dares to 
offer me his hand, red with the stain of murder.” 

“ You have no right to fix that crime upon your 
brother,” Mme. Quijada exclaimed, angrily. “ There is 
nothing to identify him with the murder, absolutely noth- 
ing. Your name might be used by any one. The un- 
fortunate man may have talked about you, boasted of 
his conquest in the presence of his servants — of some 
French or Italian butler perhaps, who, being in the house, 
would know all his master’s intended movements, and all 
about the money which v a", (o change hands that day. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


301 


Servants are often agents — conscious or unconscious — in 
crimes that mystify everybody. You have no right to 
associate Leon with that crime. 

“ I have the right of my own conviction. I know as 
well that it was his hand that struck the blow as if 1 had 
been standing by when the murder was done. I have no 
doubt about the murderer. What I want to find out is 
the identity of the murderer’s accomplice — before God and 
man as guilty as the murderer himself. Who was the 
middle-aged woman who met Robert Hatrell in the street, 
and asked him to go to Antoinette Morel’s death-bed? Who 
was the woman who used that lure? Who was the elderly 
French woman who changed the English bank-notes on the 
Riviera? Can you answer me those questions, aunt, you 
whose bread I have eaten— the bitter bread of dependence — 
and whose slave 1 have been since my illness left me unable 
to grapple with the outside world? 1 have been afraid to live 
anywhere else — afraid to be among other people, lest in 
some moment of dark thought I should betray my brother. 
He is of my own blood, and I have sworn myself never to 
give him up to justice.” 

Give him up!” cried her aunt, contemptuously. “ Why, 
you have not one shred of proof against him. There is 
nothing but your own brain-sick fancies to connect your 
brother with that Englishman’s death. You are toquee, 
child, about Robert Hatrell. Your poor brain has never 
got over the fever that your sick fancies brought upon you; 
and one ought to be patient with you, and let you talk any 
silly nonsense you like. Luckily for your brother the police 
are not influenced by hysterical women. They want facts, 
hard facts; and there is not one fact to connect your 
brother, Claude Leon Morel, with the crime in Denmark 
Street.” 

“ Or you with the mysterious accomplice,” said Louise. 
“ Perhaps not. Yet if that is so why did you both change 
your names within a month of the murder? Why was 1 
made to change my name from Morel to Marcet, and to 
assume my second baptismal name in place of my first?” 

“ Your brother had made himself notorious during the 
Commune. He was not included in the amnesty, and he 
could not return to France in his own name. He was sup- 
posed to have been shot with the others at Satory. His 
resurrection would have been dangerous.” 


302 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“ Say that the false name meant nothing; but how do 
you account for the sudden change from poverty to wealth? 
You and I were living in an attic in a wretched dirty street, 
in one of the shabbiest, dreariest quarters of that great 
wilderness of brick, where we had taken refuge after the 
troubles here. One day you disappeared without telling 
me where you were going, leaving me just a line to say you 
were going away upon business and might be some time 
away. You left me penniless, except for the pittance I 
was able to earn by working for a Jewish tailoring house, 
cruel work, which wore my fingers to the bone. You had 
been gone a week when I heard some women in the court 
where I lived talking of the murder. I could just under- 
stand enough English then to know what they were talking 
about, but I listened heedlessly enough until I heard the 
name Hatred — not pronounced as I pronounced it, yet a 
great horror came over me at the thought that it might be 
the same name. It was he who was murdered, I told my- 
self. I was an idiot to be so disturbed by fear, and yet I 
could not command myself or keep calm while I questioned 
the women. They couldn't tell me who the murdered man 
was — only that his name was Hatred. They said if 1 
wanted to know more I had better buy a newspaper. I 
rushed out into the street like a mad woman, and it seemed 
to me as if I should never find a shop where they sold news- 
papers, though there were hundreds of shops in the long 
busy street. At last 1 found a tobacconist's where there 
were lots of newspapers stuck in a rack against the door- 
way. I took three of them, haphazard, and gave the shop- 
keeper the last threepence I had in the world — the pence 
that were to have bought food for the day. I hurried back 
to my garret as fast as my feet would carry me. I thought 
more than once that I should fad down in the street, for 
my knees seemed to give way under me. I would not 
trust myself to look at the papers till I was safe in my own 
hole, like a wounded animal; and then 1 bolted my door and 
sat down upon the bare boards and unfolded one of the 
newspapers." 

“ Why go over ad this old ground, Louise? A little while 
ago you reproached me for dwelling on- the past; and now 
you are harping upon old sores. You have told me this 
story often enough." 

Louise had begun to pace the room in an agitated man' 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


303 


ner as she talked, while Mine. Quijada sunk deeper into her 
luxurious arm-chair, and sat there looking up at her niece 
with an awe-struck countenance, as if she had been 
Nemesis. Time was when she would have put down all 
such speech as this with a high hand; but the growing 
habit of brandy and chloral had weakened her energies. 
She who once held so firm a mastery over her daughter 
and niece was now powerless to control either. 

“ 1 will talk of these things. You have kept me long 
enough in miserable silence and submission. I have been 
your drudge — not because 1 feared you, or valued the 
home you have given me — because 1 care nothing for my 
life, and would as soon be a servant as an empress. But 
there are times when the memory of the past is too strong 
for me. 1 want you to know what I suffered when I was 
alone in that garret. The room comes back to me in my 
dreams sometimes with a hideous reality, and I fancy 1 am 
sitting there in the hotsummer afternoon, stitching, stitch- 
ing in hopeless monotony, as if I were a human machine. 
1 must talk of that hideous past. It is in my mind always; 
it is a part of me.’’ 

She walked to and fro in silence for a few minutes, and 
then went on recalling her misery, step by step. 

“ The first newspaper that I opened was full of the Den- 
mark Street murder — and the Denmark Street murder was 
the murder of Kobert Hatrell. I could read English much 
better than I could speak it, and there was not one word 
of the witnesses that escaped me. I saw my own name, and 
understood that it was the name of his poor Antoinette 
which had lured him to the shambles in which he was to 
be killed. And then I knew that the murderer was my 
brother — my brother whose face 1 had not seen since the 
first few weeks after we came to London. I knew that the 
pretended watchmaker in Denmark Street was my brother, 
and that the woman who asked Kobert Hatrell to go to the 
death-bed of a girl called Antoinette must be you, and only 
you. And I knew that because Robert Hatrell had once 
been kind to me, and loved me a little, perhaps, in spite 
of the differences in our station, because of those few happy 
days of my girlhood, he had been trapped and murdered. 
It was not till afterward that I read about the changing of 
the notes on the Riviera; but when I did I knew well 
enough that the gray-haired Frenchwoman was you. I 


304 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


knew your shifty tricks well enough in the past to know 
that you would have no difficulty in disguising yourself and 
aping the manners of a woman of quality. That was 
months afterward, when I was well enough to leave the 
French hospital, where I was carried raving mad with brain 
fever after starving in my garret for nearly a week, trying 
to work from daybreak till dark, and spending sleepless 
nights of agony. But for the refuge that blessed institution 
afforded me I must have died of hunger in my garret, or 
been turned out-of-doors to die in the street. My landlord 
was a cab driver, and he had the humanity to put me into his 
cab, burned up with fever and delirious as I was, and 
drive me to the hospital, where he told them my story. 

“ I sent you money as soon as I had settled at Madrid, 
where 1 went in the hope of getting help from an old 
friend.'^ 

“ Yes, your letter, telling me to go to Madrid and in- 
closing the money for the journey arrived after I had gone 
to the hospital. The letter was given me when I recov- 
ered my senses, and when I was able to travel I set out for 
Spain. In Madrid 1 found you established in very different 
quarters to our garret in the Minories. Your old friend 
had been very generous to you. You who had been nearly 
starving in London were able to make a very good figure in 
Madrid, able to send your daughter to a convent school, you 
who were living on bread and water before Robert Hatrell 
was murdered. Do you suppose I ever doubted where your 
money came from? I knew from the beginning that it was 
the price of blood. You called me mad when 1 refused 
to eat or drink with you while your prosperity lasted. You 
laughed at me because I preferred a crust of bread in my 
garret to your dainty fare. When your money was gone 
and you were again reduced to poverty my mind was easier, 
I could better bear to live with you, and then 1 grew fond 
of Dolores — she at least was innocent of all evil — and so I 
learned to bear the life.'’^ 

“ You are a fool,^^ muttered Mme. Quijada, hastily. 
“ I have heard all this rhodomontade of yours so often that 
I never think it worth my while to argue with you. Just 
give me your arm to help me to my room, before Dolores 
and her husband come home from the theater. These 
rheumatic knees of mine will hardly carry me upstairs 
without assistance. You are a fool, Louise. You might be 


’IVHOSE WAS The HAND? 


305 


a milliner’s drudge, toiling among a lot of other drudges at 
this day if it vvere not for your cousin Dolores and me.” 

“ I might have been lying at the bottom of the Seine 
long ago if it were not for Dolores,” answered Louise, 
gloomily. “ Her love has been the only bond that held 
me to life.” 


CHAPTER XXV. 
daisy’s diaky in joy. 

I am eiigaged to Gilbert Florestan. At last I understand 
what it is to be an engaged girl, and henceforward 1 shall 
be able to sympathize with every engaged girl in this 
world, of whatever nation, of whatever color, whether she 
wear ostrich feathers and diamonds in her head at the 
Court of St. James, or a feather girdle in some unknown 
islet of the South Seas, whether she spend her allowance 
on frocks or on beads. Yes, till 1 am ninety, till I am cold 
in death, I shall be able to sympathize with every lover and 
every loved one upon earth, for now I know what love 
means. I know that it means everything! 

It means the color of .the sky, and the brightness of the 
sun — it means the perfume of flowers and the freshness of 
morning — it means the balmy noontide, and it means the 
restful coolness of green waving boughs; it means lamp- 
light at eventide in cosy, gracious drawing-rooms — it means 
blind-man’s holiday beside the morning-room Are! It 
means all these; for all these have double beauty, and 
charm, and comfort, and sweetness since Gilbert and I were 
engaged. 

What will Cyril think, down at the bottom of this round 
globe, when he hears that Gilbert and I are to be married 
on the first day of the new year? What can he think, ex- 
cept that I am the lightest and most contemptible young 
woman he ever had the misfortune to count among his ac- 
quaintance. 

Beatrice Reardon has been very nice to me. She says 
that I have nothing to be ashamed about in the transaction. 
It is customary. It is, one may say, a rule of the game. 
When people break olf an engagement, even if they have 
been engaged for years, and have doted on each other all 
the time, it is their duty to get engaged to other people 
without the slightest loss of time. They owe this to their 


306 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


own dignity. A girl who has the slightest self-respect will 
get engaged within a week after the parting, even if she 
has to marry a chimney-sweep. 

“ Of course, said I, “ that is wdiat Claire does in the 
‘ Ironmaster,^ and every one knows what a perfect heroine 
she was.^^ 

“ If you can just tolerate Mr. Florestan, you may con- 
sider yourself very lucky,^^ said Beatrice. “ When I heard 
you were going to marry him, I made up my mind that he 
was absolutely loathsome to you. 

“ Did you?’"’ cried I. “ Curious, isn’t it? I really can 
just submit to the idea of a future existence as his wife. I 
shall live next door to mother, and that will be some con- 
solation.” 

I meant to write everything in this diary. It was to be 
“ my novel,” the romance of my life, with all its bright 
colors and all its dark shadows; it was to be a book to 
whose pages I could go back when I am middle-aged and 
when I am old, and live again all the happiest hours of my 
youth, and awaken echoes of old voices and vivid smiles, 
and every thought, feeling, and fancy of the passing hour. 
The wheels of the chariot roll on so swiflly when one is 
happy. One should try at least to put a break upon 
memory; and for that there is only one way — pen and ink. 
Yes, I meant the story of my life to be complete; and yet 
I am going to leave one little blank — a little blank, did I 
say? a blank which represents the crisis of my existence, 
the turning-point between dull patience and consummate 
bliss. 

lean not write the mode and manner of my engagement, 
that sudden passage from liberty to bondage, when he took 
me in his arms, in the arbor where we were once so miser- 
able, and called me “ wife.” Wife, as if we were mar- 
ried already. Absurd, no doubt, to the indifferent reader, 
but the word thrilled my heart. 

I can not write of his kisses, or count them as if they 
were pounds, shillings, and pence in the housekeeper’s 
book. I can not write all the sweet foolishness of his talk, 
the undeserved praises, the intoxicating flatteries, which he 
protested were not flatteries. Of those ridiculous moments 
I can keep no record. Perhaps if I had been let in at the 
gate of Paradise for half an hour I should not be able to 
describe the heavenly garden when I came out again. It 


WHOSE WAS THE HA HD ? 


30 '?' 


is the same with that half hour in the arbor. He talked, 
and I listened, and we were engaged. That is my only 
record. 

On the same evening, however, we had a very serious 
conversation on the terrace after dinner. Mother was in 
her favorite seat by the drawing-room window. Uncle 
Ambrose was pacing the ro^m. We could see them both 
in the lamp-light as we walked slowly up and down. The 
evening was wonderfully warm and balmy for the end of 
September, and the great full moon was rising behind 
Lamford church tower, this being the third moon we have 
worn out since we left London. 

We talked of the moon a little, and he quoted Shelley, 
whom he knows as well as if he had competed for one of 
Mrs. Crawshay’s prizes; and then I ventured to ask him a 
question which had been burning my tongue ever since we 
were engaged, just four hours and a half. It is wonderful 
what those four hours had done for me. I felt as much at 
my ease with him as if I had been engaged for three weeks, 
and I began to understand the cool audacity of girls who 
send i\iQ\v fiancbs on messages and make light of them in 
company, and the free' and easy manners of the motherly 
girls who mend their sweethearts’ gloves, and scold them 
for spilling things on their waistcoats, and put diachylum 
plaster on their wounds. 

“Will you be very angry if I ask you a question.^” I 
asked. 

“ I should be angry if you wished to ask me anything 
and didn’t,” said he. “ Being your slave, what should 1 
do—” 

“Please don’t,” 1 cried. “Cyril quoted that sonnet 
once, and I was quite rude to him about it. 1 shouldn’t 
like you to quote anything second-hand. Yet it is a lovely 
sonnet, isn’t it?” I added, apologetically, for tlie line sound- 
ed sweet from him. Cyril was not in touch with my ideas 
about Shakespeare.” Pie laughed, and answered with a 
most unnecessary kiss. 

“ You really wouldn’t mind?” I asked. 

“ From those lips all words are dear.” 

“ Were you ever in love with anybody before you began 
to care for me?” 

“Ah! I thought that question would come. Shall I 
answer it Jesuitically or honestly?” 


30 ^ 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ^ 


“ Oh, honestly, please; be brutal to me rather than dis- 
honest. Of course I am prepared for the worst. You 
must have adored ever so many girls before you came to 
let your glances light upon insignificant me. 

“ Ever so many? That’s a large order. Suppose I 
plead guilty to two. I wish I had never looked at a wom- 
an, or, at least, never wasted a thought upon one till I saw 
you. I shouldn’t, if I had only known what was coming.” 

“ Do you really think I am as nice as the other two?” 
I asked, comforted by those sweet words. 

“ I think you are to them as a wild rose on a hedge in 
the dewy morning compared with a double dahlia in the 
heat and dust and glare of tent No. 2 at a flower show. 
You are as the freshness of the morning, and they smelled 
of gas. The first could not help that, poor soul, for it was 
across the foot-lights my heart went out to her.” 

“Was she very pretty?” I asked. 

“ She was very pretty. That was just fifteen years ago, 
mark you, when I was at Eton. She is very pretty at this 
present hour; she- will go on being very pretty, I hope, till 
the end of the century. She was a burlesque actress, and I 
saw her in the daintiest little villager’s dress you can con- 
ceive, dancing as lightly as a real fairy, and not a stage 
one. Yes, Daisy,” he said, gravely, “ I plead guilty to 
being over head and ears in love with Miss Millicent Mel- 
ville, of the Hilarity, fifteen years ago, for the whole space 
of the Christmas holidays. 1 was stone-broke for her sake, 
and spent all my tips upon theater tickets, hot-house flow- 
ers, and chocolate caramels. I delivered the flowers and 
the caramels to the surly stage doorkeeper, who may have 
sold them to the minor members of the trouj^e for aught I 
know. I never got speech of my houri, and I was heart- 
broken when T discovered, upon unimpeachable authority, 
that she had a husband and five children. How she did it 
— how she looked so lovely and sylph-like and childishly 
innocent, with an eating and drinking, smoking and swear- 
ing man and five brats to work for I have never been able 
to understand.” 

“ Was she number one?” I asked. 

“ Yes, she was number one.” 

“ In that case 1 forgive you your first love. And now 
tell me about your second.” 

“ That is a graver case, Daisy. I can not make light of 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 309 

that infatnatioii. Cupid did not assail me v\dth paper pel- 
lets that time. His arrows were barbed, and the barbs 
were poisoned. I loved a woman who was unworthy of my 
love, Daisy. I passed through the scathing fire of a wasted 
passion — 

“ You loved her as well as you love me?’^ 1 asked, feel- 
ing just as if I had dropped from a paradise in yonder 
moon down to a hard, cruel earth. 

All my gladness perished in one gasping sigh. I felt 
sure he had cared more for her than for me. / 

“ I^m afraid 1 must plead guilty to having loved her 
very dearly while my love lasted, Daisy; but the cure was 
a clean cure. There was not so much as a scar left from 
the old wound by the time 1 met you in Paris; and from 
that hour I was yours and yours only. ” 

“ And if I had not broken with Cyril, what would you 
have done?’^ 

‘‘ Lived on my roaming, desultory life, and suffered the 
dull agony of an empty heart. 

“ Were you really unhappy in Scotland, in spite of 
grouse and caper-cailzies and things?"^ 

“ In spite of as fine a' stag as was ever stalked, which 
this hand slew the day before 1 casually heard that Arden 
had sailed in the big new ship for Colombo, 

“ And would you not have found some new divinity be- 
fore Christmas?’ 

It was delightful to have him there and to be able to 
catechise him; yet 1 could not help being savagely jealous 
of that unknown love, the number two in his calendar. 

1 could not but feel that it was nice of him to tell me the 
truth, even at the risk of offending me for life. 

‘‘ Tell me about that second flame of yours,^’ 1 said, 
agonized with curiosity. “ Was she very lovely?” 

“ She was splendidly handsome, a woman whose dia- 
monds seemed more brilliant than those of other women, 
because they so harmonized with her bold, bright beauty. 
1 was among many worshipers, and I happened to be the 
most eligible of her adorers from a matrimonial point of 
view, and so she was gracious to me, and so 1 was her 
slave — ” 

“ Did she jilt you?” I asked, for there was a bitterness 
in his tone which assured me the dear creature had treated 
him abominably. 


310 


whosj: was the hahd ? 


I could have hugged her for it. 

“ Well, it was hardly a case of jilting. If 1 were to 
write my story I should call the book ‘ Illusion and Disil- 
lusion.^ 1 was fortunate enough to find her out — before 
marriage instead of afterward. My innocent little Daisy 
can hardly guess what a world of misery that discovery 
saved me.^^ 

“ I don^t want to guess, I said; “ but there is one thing 
I should like to know, Gilbert.-’^ 

I blushed in the moonlight, and trembled at my own 
audacity as I pronounced his Christian name. 

1 had my arm through his, and found myself giving his 
arm a gentle squeeze now and then just to make sure that 
he was real, and that all the ecstasy of this hour was not a 
moonlit dream. 

“ Ask as many questions as you like, fair Fatima. There 
is no blue chamber in my memory of which you may not 
open the door. 

“ It does not pain you to speak of that wicked person 

“ Not a whit. No more than it would pain me to talk 
of Cleopatra.^’ 

“ But at the time of your disillusion — did love die all at 
once, or by inches?^’ 

“ Love died in an hour; but there was something, the 
shadow and memory and after-taste of passion, which was 
plaguedly long a-dying. 

“ Is it dead yet?’^ I asked, frightened. 

“ Dead as a door-nail. Dead as Scrooge’s partner, old 
Marley; deader, for no ghost of that vanished feeling will 
ever haunt me. 1 was heart-whole, sound as a roach, the 
night I met you at the grand opera, and from that night I 
was your slave.” 

“ Oh! that is nonsense,” cried 1; “ you could not have 
cared for me all at once, a commonplace English person 
like me. What was there in my poor face to catch your 
eye?” 

“ Innocence, truth, candor. The virtues which make 
man’s life blessed and honorable. 1 saw poetic loveliness, 
aiid through that transparent beauty I saw the true and 
pure heart of girlhood, a heart of virgin gold, flawless, 
above price.” 

“ Don’t, don’t,” 1 cried, standing on tiptoe to put my 
hand upon his lips. “ This last illusion is worse than the 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 311 

first and second. How can I ever live up to such an ideal 
as you have made out of me?’^ 

“ Only love me, Daisy; there is no more to do. 

“ Oh, that comes too easy. 1 did that before I was 
asked. 

Mother^s voice calling us from the open window put an 
end to our confidential talk, but my heart was quite at ease 
now that I knew the history of his earlier loves. If he had 
told me he had never been in love before he saw me I 
should certainly not have believed him; and 1 should have 
been tortured for all the years to come by inextinguishable 
distrust. 

All this happened nearly a month ago, though I couldn^t 
bring myself to write about it before to-day; and perhaps I 
should not be writing now if Gilbert had not been obliged 
to go to London to see his solicitor — our first parting — 
leaving me to get through the day somehow without him. 
The grounds look so dreary, the shrubberies seem so empty 
— and oh! what ages to eight-o’clock dinner, when he will 
be back. 


CHAPTEE XXVI. 
daisy’s diary in sorrow. 

When I wrote the last line in this book I think I must 
have been the happiest girl in the world. There was hardly 
a cloud upon my sky — yes, one cloud, the fact that the 
man whom I thought my friend and benefactor was out of 
health and unhappy. Yet, in spite of that one cloud I 
was utterly happy, selfishly absorbed in my new happiness. 

To-day I take up my pen in fear and trembling. A 
dark and terrible cloud has closed over my life. 

I thank God that cloud does not rest upon my lover’s 
head. He stands out in the sunshine, and all my thoughts 
of him are full of thankfulness and delight but I can no 
longer be the selfish, self-absorbed creature I was when I 
wrote those last foolish pages, giving myself up to this 
dumb confidant as I could do to no living being. I must 
think of others now. This dark discovery forces my 
thoughts into other grooves. I must remember that I 
am my mother’s daughter, as well as Gilbert’s affianced 
wife. 

Oh! it is all so sad, so awful, such a cruel revelation, 


312 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


changing the whole color of life, stripping off the mask 
from a face that was once honored and beloved, opening a 
deep well of baseness and iniquity in the flowery garden- 
world where 1 was so happy. To me it was as startling 
and. sudden and blighting to come face to face with that 
great wickedness as it would have been to Eve hi Eden, if 
the ground had yawned at her feet revealing a charnel- 
house, there in that fair, new world where she had never 
heard of death. 

Sometimes, for a few moments, I doubt, and ask myself 
if I am not deluded, if that hideous suspicion which grew 
in an hour into absolute conviction might not after all be 
groundless — and then I go over the facts slowly, in cold 
blood, one by one, slowly putting them together again like 
the pieces in a puzzle, and there the awful fact appears in 
unmistakable certainty. 

Oh, father, father, how that trusting open nature, that 
generous heart of yours was cheated! How coldly, delib- 
erately, and heartlessly your life was plotted away by the 
man who sat at your table, and smiled beside your hearth, 
and was to you almost as a brother. It was your own 
familiar friend who planned your murder. 

I must go back to the moment when this hideous secret 
revealed itself. It was natural that as Gilbert’s fiancee I 
should tell him everything that had happened to me in all 
my life, and indeed I fear that I must have bored him ter- 
ribly since we were engaged by prattling to him about 
every insignificant detail of my colorless existence — my les- 
sons, my boat, my playfellows and friends, I don’t believe 
I have spared him a single doll, certainly not a favorite 
doll, not a single nursery anecdote, nor a single family 
joke. He has been told everything. 

Two days ago he came into the drawing-room just as it 
was growing dusk. He had been to London again, and we 
had had another parting, and I had felt very mopy all the 
afternoon, more especially as mother had gone off on her 
weekly round, to hear her weekly tale of woes and illnesses. 
I did not expect to see Gilbert until dinner-time, and oh, 
how my foolish heart thrilled with delight when I heard his 
step in the hall just after the clock struck five. 

It is not very often that I have the privilege of making 
tea for Gilbert, and on this occasion I am sorry to say I 
made it so strong that it was hardly drinkable. 1 saw he 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


313 


made a wry face at every sip — though he declared it was 
quite the nicest tea he had ever tasted— aud even chivalry 
did not enable him to empty his cup. 

“Was it Metternich or some other great diplomat who 
sipped a glass of castor oil with every sign of relish because 
his host had offered it to him as particularly fine Tokay 
I asked him, laughing at his self-sacrifice, and then I rang 
and ordered some chocolate a la vanille, which our butler 
makes to perfection. “ You poor victim of soft-hearted- 
ness,’’ 1 said, “ why didn’t you tell me that the tea was 
horrid? 1 overdid it in wanting to make it especially good, 
so that you might have a high opinion of my domestic 
capabilities.” 

“ I like strong tea,” he answered, “ but certainly yours 

fortissi7no ; I fancy a good-sized pot of such stuff would 
serve to blow up the Houses of Parliament.” 

How gay we were, as we sat and talked and laughed in 
the growing dusk, with our feet on the marble curb, croon- 
ing over the fire like John Anderson and his old wife. 
How proud I felt of my lover, and how blessed in the as- 
surance that he was all my own, that I had left no corner 
of his heart unexplored, no secret hidden from my prying 
eyes. 

We sipped our chocolate, which was really delicious. 
What su] erior creatures servants are! If 1 had attempted 
to make that menier a la vanille I have no doubt the result 
would have been “ ojious,” as dear Mr. Toole says in 
“The Upper Crust.” We sipped our chocolate, and 
talked and talked, not from grave to gay, but from gay to 
grave; and presently I told my dearest the single secret 
of my life, the one act of mine which I had hidden from 
the best of mothers. 

I told him how when I first went to London 1 was haunt- 
ed by the ghastly vision of my father’s murder, and how a 
morbid longing to see the room where that dark deed was 
done took possession of my mind, and would not be driven 
away. 

I told him how I crept out of the house in the summer 
twilight, and every step in that dismal pilgrimage till 1 
came to Church Street on my way home. And then I 
told him of that intolerable Frenchman’s insolence, and of 
the good soul in the hansom, to whom 1 should so like to 


314 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


leave a legacy when 1 am old enough to make a will, if I 
only knew his honorable name. 

“ I know my enemy’s name well enough,” said I, “ for, 
as the cab was driving off with me, his friends called out to 
him, ‘ Hola, Duverdier.’ ” 

“ Duverdier!” cried Gilbert, starting as if he had been 
shot. “ Great God in heaven! AVhy, that is the name of 
the man I believe to be your father’s murderer!” 

In the next instant he seemed to regret having spoken, 
but 1 would not let him take back his words. I made him 
tell me all he knew or thought or suspected about my fa- 
ther’s cruel death; and stage by stage I got the whole story 
out of him. It was slow work, for he was sorely disinclined 
to tell me anything. 

“ Now that I know something 1 must know all,” I said, 
when he refused to answer my questions; and so, little by 
little, I heard the whole story. 

My mother had asked him to help her in tracing out a 
girl whom my father admired and had half a mind to 
marry before he had ever seen mother’s face. She ap- 
pealed to Gilbert, counting on his knowledge of Parisian 
life, and he had succeeded beyond his hopes up to a certain 
stage; but just as he had put his hand, as it were, upon 
the brother of this French woman, whom he believed to be 
the so-called watchmaker in Denmark Street, the man left 
Paris, leaving no clew to his destination. 

“ 1 could do no more than leave the case in the hands of 
the Parisian police, who have a strong motive for finding 
your father’s murderer, if he is above ground,” said Gil- 
bert. “Of course my reasons for believing this to be the 
man are in a measure conje(3tural, but the circumstantial 
evidence is strong. The man who murdered your father 
was a man who knew the story of your father’s youthful 
love affair, and was able to use the French milliner’s name 
as a decoy. It is known that Morel was in London with 
other Communists at the time of the murder; it is known 
that he was heard of at Madrid soon after the murder, and 
that he was then flush of money. For my own satisfaction 
I have convincing proof that this Duverdier is the man 
Claude Morel; but it is not such proof as could be pro- 
duced in a court of justice. The evidence that convinced 
me was the evidence of a woman’s face.” 

And then he told me how he had met Morel’s sister, and 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


315 


had taxed her with her identity with the girl whom my 
father once loved. Her emotion at the sound of my fa- 
therm’s name was pitiable; her agitation when he accused 
her brother of the murder was terrible. After that inter- 
view he had no doubt as to the guilt of the man now known 
as Leon Huverdier. 

“ The one missing link in the chain of evidence is the 
means by which the knowledge of your father's move- 
ments on that fatal day was transmitted to the murderer. 
He must have had an informant, if not an accomplice, 
either in the immediate vicinity of this house, or in the 
lawyer's office, where the hour and the nature of his ap- 
pointment may have been known to the clerks." 

A deadly chill crept through my veins as he said these 
words. I was glad of the growing darkness which hid my 
face from him. I was glad that I had deferred the light- 
ing of the lamps, so as to prolong our blind-man's holiday. 
I sat silent, motionless, paralyzed by the horrible suspicion 
which filled my mind. 

Some one at Lamford must have given the information 
that enabled the murderer to plan his crime. Who could 
that some one be unless it were the familiar friend, the 
confidant of every enterprise and every idea of my father 
and mother? My mother has told me in answer to my 
questions that no servant in the house knew where my fa- 
ther was going or what he was going to do that day. The 
conversation at dinner on the previous evening had not 
touched on the business part of the transaction. My father 
had been full of the landscape gardener's plans, and the 
talk had been wholly of the terraces and the arboretum, of 
leveling and planting, and laying on water for fouji tains 
and greenhouses. All that was known in the household 
on that evening or on the following morning was that my 
father was going to London, and was to return before din- 
ner. Yet some one had furnished such precise information 
that my father's murderer was able to meet him midway 
between the bank and the lawyer's office. Who was that 
accomplice, or worse than accomplice of the murderer; 
since the idea of murder might never have entered Claude 
Morel's mind if some one, knowing my father's affairs, 
had not told him how large a sum of money might be 
gained by that crime? 

Who could that secret assassin, that worse than mur- 


316 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


derer, be but the man whose footsteps were now dogged 
by the shedder of blood? — who, but that man whose face 
bore in every line the marks of an unextingnishable re- 
morse, the man whom I had seen shrinking away with hor- 
ror-stricken countenance from the room where my father 
used to sit, and where his guilty conscience may have con- 
jured up the shadow of the dead? 

His friend, his generous, confiding friend; oh, God! 
what a depth of iniquity! To have deliberately planned 
that cruel murder, to have plotted the crime which a vul- 
gar assassin was to execute, to have waited and watched 
the opportunity, perhaps to have tempted and persuaded 
the assassin against some remnant of better feeling, some 
instinctive shrinking from bloodshed, some scruple of con- 
science. And to have been with us, day by day, after that 
devilish act, our friend, our consoler; till at last, trading 
on a woman’s gratitude for fancied betiefits, he put for- 
ward his claim to the wife of his victim, and possessed him- 
self of the object of his wicked love. 

Possessed himself! Yes, thank God, I know that my 
mother never loved him, that she gave her life up to him 
as if in the payment of a debt, sacrificing herself to reward 
the fidelity of a life-long friendship. 

God keep her from the horror of knowing what I know! 

My long silence made Gilbert uneasy about me, and he 
was full of tender sympathy, thinking that our conversa- 
tion about my father had renewed an old grief. Mother 
came in while he was consoling me, and the lamps were 
brought, and I had to put on a cheerful countenance some- 
how for her dear sake; and by and by I had to sit down to 
dinner with that Judas, and still to play the hypocrite. I 
could hear the sound of my own voice as I talked, and it 
had such a false tone that it jarred upon my ear. 

Oh, the horror of that hour in the drawing-room when 
mother asked me to play those numbers of Chopin which 
her husband prefers, and when I sat before the piano and 
played like a machine, while Ambrose Arden walked up 
and down with soft, cat-like step, and now and again 
paused and stood behind me for a few minutes, and once 
even laid his hand upon my shuddering shoulder. My 
whole being was one sense of horror and revulsion. I could 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


317 


scarcely breathe while he was so near me; yet I went on 
playing somehow, always like a machine. Poor Chopin! 

“ You are not in your usual form to-night, Daisy, said 
Gilbert, who pretends to think a great deal of my playing. 

And then he came over to me, and bent down to look 
into my eyes, and talked to me ever so sweetly, and his dear 
presence exorcised the demon, and that guilty wretch 
walked slowly away, and went on with his restless prowling 
to and fro, to and fro, like a spirit in hell — the hell of 
guilty memories and gnawing thoughts, the hell of the 
traitor and murderer, that hell within the soul of man which 
made Judas hurl back his fatal thirty pieces upon his 
tempters, and rush out into the field and destroy himself. 

Where their worm dieth not and their fire is not 
quenched. 

That is the hell which Ambrose Arden has made for 
himself. 

1 went on playing while Gilbert went back to the other 
end of the room where he had been sitting with mother, 
and challenged her to a game at chess. I was alone in the 
shadowy corner by the piano, and as I played I watched 
that tall, slim figure, with the bent shoulders, moving 
slowly to and fro with a gliding motion. 

It seemed as if now this awful truth has revealed itself, 
I see Ambrose Arden in a new light — as if I had been 
blindfold before, and had made for myself an image of the 
man, and colored it with my own colors. The face and 
figure I watched to-night seemed new and strange, and the 
signs of a guilty conscience, the indications of a crafty and 
double nature seemed to me now so strongly impressed 
upon every look and movement of the man that 1 tell my- 
self 1 must have been blind all this time, or 1 could not 
have missed his secret. It is there, written upon his brow, 
the very brand that seared the forehead of the first mur- 
derer, Cain. 

What a relief it was to be alone at last; yes, even a relief 
to bid good-night to Gilbert and mother, and to lock the 
door of my own room, and to sit down by the fire, face to 
face with the grim and hideous truth. I wanted to think 
out my horrible Jdea, to arrange all the facts which seem 
to constitute such damning evidence against my step-fa- 


318 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


ther, to try if I could not acquit liim^, or, at any rate, write 
“ not proven against his crime. 

Alas, no! After long hours of thought, after a long 
winter night without one interval of blessed sleep, my rea- 
son still condemned him. In my mother’s second husband, 
in the friend and teacher of all my early years, the man to 
whom I owed so much — in him who last of all men I 
should have suspected, I still saw the murderer of my 
father. 

I recalled Duverdier’s appearance in Grosvenor Square, 
his persistence in seeing my step-father, his look of baffled 
.fury as he left the house. 1 recalled his appearance in this 
place. Would any man without credentials of a guilty 
nature dare so to haunt a man in my step-father’s position? 

Yet this mere fact of the man’s persecution would not 
have influenced me to believe in my step-father’s guilt. 
The evidence that was to my mind conclusive was the 
evidence of Cyril’s appearance and Cyril’s conduct upon 
the day when he played the listener to a conversation be- 
tween his father and Duverdier. 1 saw those three figures 
in the lane. Ambrose Arden and Duverdier side by side, 
Duverdier talking angrily, vehemently, though in a lowered 
voice, and that other figure following stealthily, listening 
wilh bent brow and pallid face. 

Was it like my frank and manly Cyril to play the spy 
upon his father’s movements, to creep at his father’s heels 
and listen to a confidential conversation? What could be 
more unlike his cljaracter, as 1 knew it? Nothing but the 
most stringent circumstances would have forced him into 
such a contemptible position. 

And within two or three hours of that scene in the lane 
he came to me, changed and aged as if by a mortal malady, 
and told me that all was over between us. I recalled 
almost every word of our conversation: his protest that the 
motive of his renunciation was one which I could never 
know, his resolution to go to the uttermost end of the 
earth, to begin a new life, to cut himself adrift from all 
old associations. And this determination, this abandon- 
ment of the whole scheme of his existence, had been re- 
solved upon since he left the rectory, in high spirits, the 
most liglit-hearted of men. What but some awful revela- 
tion could have so quickly changed the whole color of his 
life? 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


319 


This was the evidence that weighed most heavily with 
me; and next to this was the evidence of my step-father^s 
decay, the gradual deepening of the gloom that had dark- 
ened over him in the midst of the happiest and fairest sur- 
roundings. 

No, I had no doubt now as to the brain which plotted 
the murder, or the hand which sent the information to the 
murderer on the eve, or on the morning, of the fatal day. 

And my mother was this man's wife, and must never 
know his guilt, lest the horror of it should drive her mad. 
AVhen 1 think of her abiding love for my father, and think 
how she gave herself to this Judas, not caring for him, I 
am almost mad myself. 

Oh! what a cheat and trickster, what a prince of villains 
he has been, to play so patient a part, to sow the wicked 
seed at the first chance Fate gave him, and then to wait 
seven years for the harvest. Had he asked my mother to 
be his wife within a year or two of the murder, her eyes 
might have been opened, she might have suspected that he 
had some part in her husband's death. But after seven 
years of tranquil, self-abnegating friendship, after winding 
himself into our hearts by every artifice of an accomplished 
hypocrite, it seemed almost a natural, inevitable develop- 
ment that he should change from friend to lover, and that 
his constancy in friendship should claim its reward. 

No, my dear mother must never know this hideous 
secret, if any power of self-repression on my part can keep 
it from her. And so 1 have day after day to sit at table 
with the man who planned my father's death, and I have 
to repress all signs of repulsion, and to seem all that I once 
was to him, at least in my mother's presence. 

Hapjjily for me he spends the greater part of his exist- 
ence in the solitude of the cottage over the way. Happily 
for all of us, that existence is not likely to be a long one. 
Our Lamford doctor, who went up to London with mother 
and her husband to assist at the visit to the physician, told 
Gilbert in confidence that there is organic disease of the 
heart, and that Ambrose Arden is not likely to live to old 
age. 


20 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE AMIABLE MAGICIAN. 

Elderly men when they are in love are the weakest of 
mortals, and weakness is prone to compromises. In his 
conduct toward his beautiful young wife Diego Perez 
showed all the weakness of an elderly lover. He halted 
between two opinions. He wanted to keep his treasure 
secluded from the world, secure from the pursuit of Paris- 
ian treasure-seekers, and yet he wanted to flaunt his hap- 
piness before the eyes of those half dozen or so of competi- 
tors and rivals with whom he had ridden neck and neck in 
the chaise aux millions — the great race for wealth, which 
is the favorite sport of this nineteenth century, whether 
the course over which it is run be the Stock Exchange or 
the gaming-saloon, the silver mine, or the manure-heap. 
For Diego Perez the world meant one particular group of 
men at his club, one particular corner at his restaurant, 
and began and ended in that narrow circle of men who had 
begun life with a five-franc piece and were ending it with 
four or five millions sterling. To these few intimates Perez 
had boasted of his wife’s beauty, and of the villa in which 
he had enshrined his idol, as it were, in a temple of silver 
and gold; and these on more than one occasion had ex- 
pressed their desire to see the interior of the temple and the 
goddess who adorned it. 

Perez coquetted with the situation; he declared that his 
young wife was of too retiring and modest a nature to en- 
dure the gaze of strangers; he compared her to the violet 
shrinking within the shelter of its leaves; but his friends 
were not to be put off so easily. 

“ There never was a woman yet who did not like to be 
admired,” said Joffray, the famous contractor, who, like 
Perez, had made his fortune in Spanish America, but in 
another line of business; “ and if your wife is a clever 
woman she will like to make the acquaintance of men of 
the world, like Hausroth yonder and myself. I have heard 
of your wife when she was only Mademoiselle Quijada, liv- 
ing in retirement with her mother. A starveling piano- 
forte player who teaches my daughters was loud in bis 
praises of the young lady. I can understand your not car- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


321 


mg to introduce your friends to her while she was Made- 
moiselle Quijada, and you might have run the risk of losing 
her; but now that she is your wife it is a miserly thing to 
keep your friends on the outside of your door', and Til be 
bound the lady resents her seclusion/^ 

Perez could not bring himself to deny the charge. He 
argued with himself that there could be no danger in al- 
lowing Dolores to receive old fogies like Jotiray and Haus- 
roth, than whom Paris could hardly furnish two less at- 
tractive men, the former oily of complexion and obese of 
figure, with greasy iron-gray hair and a bottle nose; the 
latter lean and lantern-jawed, with foxy hair and beard, 
and the features of a modern Shylock. The men who be- 
gin life with five francs and die worth five million pounds 
have very little leisure to sacrifice to the graces. Life with 
them means to oat and drink and calculate, to invest and 
reinvest, to watch the money-market with an unwavering 
vigilance, and to concentrate all the forces of mind and 
body upon one great aim. 

No, there would bo no risk in tantalizing these old com- 
rades of the Bourse with a glimpse of his elegant domicile 
and his lovely and amiable wife; and in conceding thus 
much he would conciliate Dolores and her mother. He 
had refused to give a ball. He might compromise the 
matter by an occasional dinner-party; a small snug dinner 
at which only wealth and mature years should be repre- 
sented. 

“ 1 have not many friends, Dolores,'’^ he said to his wife 
that evening, as she sat yawning on a low ottoman in front 
of the wood fire, while he smoked his after-dinner cigar- 
ette, “but the few 1 have are devoted to me, and they are 
dying to know you. I don’t care about giving a dance, as 
I told you the other day. 1 don’t want to see my house 
turned out of windows to please a lot of young fools whose 
only claim to notice is that they can imitate a teetotum, 
but I’ve no objection to giving a dinner now and then, if 
you like.” r 

Dolores stifled a yawn before she answered. She had 
been looking at the burning logs in a waking dream, and 
this suggestion of a dinner party did not arouse any en- 
thusiasm in her. 

“ The people you know are so dreadful,” she said. 
“ You have pointed out men in the Bois as your dearest 
11 


322 


WHOSK WAS THE HAND? 


friends, whose appearance positively made me shudder. 
A long lantern-jawed man with red hair and a threadbare 
overcoat, for instance. 

Hausrdth,^^ murmured Perez, recognizing the pict- 
ure; “ a man only second in importance to the Kothschilds 
and the Mires. 

“ And a bloated creature, with a complexion that sug- 
gests nothing but the refuse of the oil mills. 

“Joffroy.^^ 

“ And a little wizened wretch, with one shoulder higher 
than the other, and long greasy hair of a greenish gray. 

“ Stronski,^' said Perez, “ a Pole by birth, and the 
keenest financier in Paris. Do you know, Dolores, the 
amount of solid capital which those three men represent?’^ 

“ 1 neither know nor care. All 1 hope is that they will 
never cross my threshold, unless indeed you allow me to 
get together so many artistic and agreeable people that I 
shall hardly be conscious of your capitalists. 

“ Where are you to get your agreeable people?’^ asked 
Perez, after a pause of discomfiture, vexed that his com- 
promise found so little favor with his idol. 

“ Oh, 1 will find them easily enough, if you only give 
me leave to send out a few invitations. Duturque knows 
lots of clever people, and he can send out my cards. Mon- 
sieur and Madame Perez invite Monsieur or Madame 
Chose to spend the evening with them — with Monsieur 
Duturque’s compliments at the corner of the card.’’ 

“But have you ever met these people in Madame Du- 
turq lie’s salon — a third floor in the Hue des Saints Peres?” 
inquired Perez, incredulously. 

“ Certainly not. They would not go to a third floor in 
the Rue des Saints Peres. They would not go anywhere 
to be entertained with Duturque’s music and Madame Du- 
turque’s weak tea; but they will come to my villa, they 
will come to the wife of Perez Peru. Voyons, mon ami, 
let us make a compromise—” 

Perez sighed. It was his own word. 

“You shall invite those dreadful-looking human ingots 
of yours to dinner, a dinner of all that is most precious in 
the way of gormandize; and after dinner 1, Madame Perez, 
will be at home to all that is most distinguished in the art 
world: the painters and sculptors; the actors and actresses; 
the journalists — ” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


323 


“ Who will write about your party in their accursed 
papers, and who will ridicule your husband?’^ 

“Why should they ridicule you? Is it ridiculous to 
have married youth and good looks instead of age and ugli- 
ness? I canH understand, Pedro, why you are so ashamed 
of your wifeP^ 


She lighted a cigarette for him as she talked, seating 
herself caressingly upon the arm of his chair, and trans- 
ferring the cigarette delicately from her lips to his. She 
knew that he was yielding, and that a caress and a few 
sweet words would clinch the bargain. 

“ Ashamed of my wife; no, it is of the contrast between 
wife and husband 1 am ashamed. It is that which the 
newspaper men will ridicule.^' 

“ They will be too wise to offend so powerful a man — ” 

“ Ah, but they have lampooned me, they have seized 
every occasion — 

“ Simply because you live in your shell like a snail. 
You are of no use to the clever people of Paris. You ful- 
fill none of the duties of a millionaire. You will be a few 
thousands richer when you die, but you will have offended 
everybody while you live. Give me carte blanche, Pedro, 
and you shall have all the journalists and caricaturists 
whom you dread at your feet. There shall be no dancing, 
there shall be no foolish young men, but 1 will give a party 
that will dazzle Paris. ” 

He did not yield without a struggle. He smoked a third 
and a fourth cigarette of his wife's lighting. Her gentle- 
ness, her graceful coquetries made him forget every reso- 
lution he had ever made to live his own life and to keep 
the tinsel and folly of the pleasure-loving world outside his 
gate. He yielded after the fourth cigar, as Ahasuerus 
might have yielded to Esther, when Esther was still the 
latest novelty in the royal harem. 

“ Ho what you like, ma clierie. Invite whom you 
please,'’ he murmured at last. 

The cards of invitation went out two days after that fire- 
side discussion. The list of names was made out with the 
aid of the good Duturque, whose professional career had 
brought him into communication with the art world of 
Paris, though it had not elevated him to intimacy with 
celebrities. Dolores trusted much to her own reputation 
as a beauty whose charms had been hidden from the outer 


324 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


world. The cards dispatched, she went to all the great 
confectioners, electricians, florists, and wine-merchants of 
Paris. She called in upholsterers and tent-makers. She 
arranged for a series of three large marquees, which were 
to cover the lawn behind her villa. The house in all its 
beauty and splendor was to be only a vestibule to these 
tented halls. The first marquee was to be decorated with 
palms and tropical plants, and was to serve as a promenade 
pure and simple. Her drawing-room was to be the en- 
trance to this outer tent, and here she was to receive her 
guests. The second marquee was to be decorated con- 
trastively with tapestries and Oriental brocades, and here 
there was to be a concert by some of the first artistes in 
Paris, and in the world. The third and largest tent was 
the supper-room, a supper served upon small round tables, 
and which was to last from midnight till two o^clock. 

For this tent Dolores had imagined, and the electricians 
had carried out, the most distinguished feature of the en- 
tertainment. From the silken dome in the center of the 
immense circular marquee hung a monster egg-shaped 
lamp, a lamp of loveliest opaline hue, shedding the mildest, 
milkiest, moonlight radiance upon the supper-tables and 
the supper-eaters. 

This was the roc’s egg, and Dolores and her dress-maker 
had arranged a costume which, without being absolutely a 
fancy dress, should be so far Oriental in character as to 
suggest the Princess Badroulbadour. 

It was very long since Mme. Quijada’s daughter had 
seemed so gay and girlish as in the fortnight during which 
the upholsterers and electricians and tent-makers were 
preparing for this eccentric entertainment. Her delight 
had something of childishness in it, no doubt, but that very 
childishness fascinated Pedro Perez, and he soon found 
himself taking as keen an interest in the approaching en- 
tertainment as his young wife. She had kept her proyiiise. 
There was to be no dancing, and none of the gilded youth 
of Paris had been invited, though Duturque had been be- 
sieged by requests for invitations from even the highest 
quarters. It was to be a fete given to intellect and talent. 
Beautiful women had been invited, but they were actresses 
celebrated for genius as well as beauty. The men belonged 
for tlie most part to the world of art and letters, but from 
a list furnished by Perez the world of finance had also been 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


325 


bidden to the fete, and the Bourse would be represented 
by its most powerful members. 

Mine. Quijada had been allowed no active part in the 
preparation of her daughter’s first party; but she expressed 
herself gratified that the gloomy spell was about to be lifted 
from the house. Louise Marcet assisted in all the floral 
decorations, for in the arrangement of flowers her taste was 
unerring; but she told her cousin that she should not ap- 
pear at the party. 

“ I should be like the skeleton at an Egyptian banquet,” 
she said, when Dolores pressed her to share in the amuse- 
ment of the evening. “ It would make people melancholy 
to see so gloomy a figure.” 

“ Poor old Louise,” murmured Dolores, moved to pity 
by the thought of this blighted life, for which even pleas- 
ure had no charm, novelty no fascination; “ your misfort- 
unes must have been very terrible to deaden all your de- 
light in life, to make you so different from other women. 

“ My misfortunes were not of a common kind, Dolores. 
If you knew all, you would hardly wonder that I stand 
alone with the memory of my grief.” 

“ But you have never trusted me with the secrets of your 
girlhood, you have never confided in me. Though we are 
cousins 1 know no more about the cause of the illness that 
changed you than if we were strangers.” 

“ There are some secrets that must be kept, Dolores — se- 
crets that involve the fate of other people.” 

“Well, I have never tormented you with questions; I 
am only sorry to see you unhappy.” 

“1 am used to bearing mv burden, Dolores; and I am 
very glad to see you so much happier than you used to be.” 

“ Oh, I have made up my mind to make the best my of 
life, if Perez will only be reasonable, and allow me my own 
way. I was simply breaking my heart in the Rue St. Guil- 
laume for want of something to do and to think about. I 
used to read of balls and parties, of all the grand enter- 
tainments of Paris, and the gowns and the jewels, while I 
was sitting solitary, with my diamonds locked up in their 
cases. And then, as for the rest,” with a sigh, “ there’s 
no use in crying for the moon, is there, Louise? When 
one has not what one loves, he must love what one has.” 

“ If you are thinking of Leon Duverdier, 1 can tell you 


326 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


(hat he is not worth one regret/’ said Louise, earnestly. 
“ Try to forget that you ever saw his face.” 

“ I have been trying ever since I married my good old 
Perez. Yes, you are right, Louise. He is not worth one 
regretful thought. He never cared for me, and I was a 
fool ever to care for him. ” 

“ He never cared for any living creature except himself, 
Dolores* His heart is harder than the nethermost mill- 
stone.” 


CHAPTER XXVIll. 

THE KOC’S EGG. 

It was within an hour of the dinner party which was to 
precede Mme. Perez’s reception, and Dolores was sitting be- 
fore her dressing-table, while the most fashionable hair- 
dresser in Paris brushed and divided the long tresses of 
raven hair before building them up to the latest invention 
of his genius. 

“ Remember, Monsieur deck, my coifiure is to be Ori- 
ental — all that there is of the most Oriental,” said Dolores, 
decisively. 

M. deck shrugged his shoulders despondently. All 
his inventive and imitative powers had of late been con- 
centrated upon the school of Pompadour and Du Barry. 
His delight had been to pile a coiffure as high as art, horse- 
hair, and hair pins could raise the human hair. If he had 
taken any step in another direction it would have been a 
retrograde step. He would have gone back to the Montespan 
and the Fontarges period, which was also an elevated 
school. But the Oriental, the school of drooping tresses 
and long plaits, the school which must needs restrict its 
operations to the hair that grew on the head of the subject, 
and could borrow nothing from art! 

True, that in the subject now under his hands there was 
abundant material for artistic treatment, but the Oriental 
style offered no scope for the caprices of genius. 

“ Has madame made up her mind irrevocably?” asked 
the hair-dresser. 

“ Yes, yes, 1 tell you. My costume is Oriental.” 

“ Then I have only to submit; but I must warn madame 
that the Eastern style— the style of Rebecca of York — is 
not that which will most set off madame’s beauty. ” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


327 


“ 1 detest liebecca of York. Make me a coiffure a la 
Koxalaiie. Something light and gay. I don't want to 
look a tragedy queen." 

‘^‘ llas madame any diamond crescents among her jew- 

“ As many as you like. Rosalie, bring me the case of 
crescents." 

The lady's maid brought a large purple velvet case, 
which she placed open on the marble dressing-table. There 
were crescents of diamonds and rubies, diamonds and 
sapphires, diamonds and emeralds, diamonds pure and 
simple. 

said the coiti'eur, “ I see my way to a startling 

success." 

He wove the soft black hair into three long plaits, and 
bound them round the small head in a triple coronet, and 
into this crown of plaited hair he stuck the jeweled cres- 
cents with an inimitable taste and lightness, until the dark 
hair served only as a background to a blaze of jewels. 

" Yes, that will do." said Dolores, surveying herself in 
her hand-glass. " That will do very well for the Princess 
Badroulbadour. " 

“ I could have pleased myself better had madame given 
me greater liberty," said M. deck, sighing as he folded 
his apron. 

" You have pleased me, and that is more to the point," 
replied Dolores, with the air of a duchess, scarcely deign- 
ing to acknowledge the hair-dresser’s departing salutation. 

Half an hour later her toilet was complete, and she went 
down to the morning-room, where she was to receive her 
husband’s guests, the drawing-room being transformed for 
the evening reception. 

Her Badroulbadour gown was of palest blush-rose bro- 
cade, falling in long straight folds from the shoulders, 
clasped across the bust with a splendid heart-shaped emerald, 
and opening over a white satin petticoat, embroidered with 
an artful and artistic admixture of beetles' wings and 
emeralds. To the careless observer that glittering green 
embroidery looked one mass of emeralds, and seemed to 
represent wealth even greater than Perez Peru could com- 
mand. 

The millionaire gazed at his wife in a stupor of admira- 
tion. 


328 


WHOSE WAS THE HAKD ? 


“ Dolores, why on earth have you put on all that splen- 
dor?’^ he exclaimed. “I have always understood that it 
was bad taste for a hostess to be finer than her guests.” 

“ Nobody cares for good or bad taste under the Eepub- 
lic,” answered Dolores. “ I want people to talk about my 
dress, and for that one must be splendid and original. 
My fete tb-night is to be a scene out of the Arabian Nights. 
Do you think I look like the Princess Badroulbadour?” 

“You look very lovely,” said Perez, who had never heard 
of Alladin’s wife. 

“ And you are proud of me, and that is all 1 want,” an- 
swered Dolores, caressingly, “ your human ingots can ap- 
pear as soon as they please. Ah, here comes mother. ” 

Mme. Quijada had shown no aspiring after originality 
in her toilet, but she was richly dressed in black brocade 
and diamonds, with a Spanish mantilla of valuable old lace, 
a costume which became her severe style of countenance bet- 
ter than any more brilliant toilet would have done. She 
was looking ill, and that calm dignity which had dis- 
tinguished her appearance in the seclusion of the Pue St. 
Guillaume had given place to a nervous and sometimes rest- 
less manner, which a medical man would at once have recog- 
nized as the manner of a suft'erer from alcoholic poisoning in 
some form or other. 

“ I hope you are satisfied at last, madame,” said her 
son-in-law; “ all Paris is coming to see what a fool an old 
man can make of himself for the sake of a pretty woman.” 

“ If the woman is only pretty enough all Paris will go 
away convinced of your good sense,” retorted Dolores, 

gayiy. 

M. and Mme. Joffray were announced in the next 
minute, and Dolores showed the most amiable 
in receiving a tall, gaunt personage in sapphire velvet and 
rubies, who twenty years earlier had been the cynosure of 
a drinking-cellar in the vicinity of the Boulevard St. 
Michel, and who was now the discontented wife of one of 
the richest men in Paris. 

More guests arrived. Herr Hausroth and his daughters, 
young ladies who gave themselves tremendous airs on the 
strength of their father’s wealth, and who were rendered 
miserable by their father’s shabby coat and by certain lit- 
tle miserly eccentricities of which he could not divest him- 
self, although living in princely style and allowing his girls 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


S20 


to get their gowns from the most expensive faiseur in 
Paris, which meant a corresponding expensiveness in all 
the minor details of their toilet, the great faimir taking 
the word “ thorough for his motto, and insisting upon 
his clients striving after ideal perfection in the art of dress. 
“ A badly cut corset, or a liair’s-breadth too much thick- 
ness in a petticoat would spoil the finest conception of a 
lady’s tailor,’^ said the great faUenr. 

Two more financiers appeared, these without women- 
kind, and in the little bustle and talk which followed upon 
their entrance, Mme. Quijada drew her daughter aside. 

“ He is in Paris,” she whispered. 

“Not Leon?” questioned Dolores, nervously. 

“ Yes, Leon. 1 received a letter from him Just now, 
while I was dressing.” 

“ 1 never want to see him again.” 

“ But he is coming to your party to-night. You must 
receive him civilly.” 

“ He has no business to invite himself to my party — 
after leaving Paris without a word of adieu — and never 
writing to us in all these months.” 

“ He is your cousin. He heard of your party from 
strangers, and it was scarcely strange he should invite him- 
self. You must be civil to him, Dolores. You were only 
too fond of him once. You can at least afford to he polite 
and friendly to him to-night.” 

“ 1 won’t be uncivil,” answered Dolores, moodily; “ hut 
I wish he were not coming. 1 don’t want him to cross my 
threshold.” 

Her face had clouded over, all the girlish gayety had 
gone from her manner, as she took M. Jolf ray’s arm and 
led the way into the dining-room, where the arrangement 
of table, flowers, and lighting was exquisite. 

All her pleasure in the prospect of the evening’s triumph 
was damped by the return of this man whose coming had 
once been looked forward to with feverish impatience, 
whose absence had made the world seem a blank. She had 
had much time for quiet thought since her marriage with 
Diego Perez, and her whole nature had changed for the 
better since her position had been legitimated, and she was 
able to look society straight in the face. Her heart was 
young enough and warm enough to be touched by an old 
man’s affection., and now that she no longer considered 


330 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


herself a prisoner and a slave, she felt sincerely grateful to 
her millionaire husband. 

Disenchantment had slowly followed upon Leonas pro- 
longed absence. She had begun to question the merits of 
the man she had admired, and whose misfortunes had ap- 
pealed to her pity. Little by little she began to see the 
charlatan where she had seen the genius, and the cold- 
hearted adventurer where she had imagined the careless, 
happy-go-lucky student, whose difficulties were a natural 
result of the artistic temperament. 

She had looked back on her intercourse with her cousin, 
looked back with unprejudiced eyes, and she had seen that 
his conduct had been mercenary from first to last, that he 
had taken every advantage of her regard for him, and had 
given her not one token of affection in return. Ho had 
extorted money from her upon every possible pretense, and 
he had looked with a greedy eye upon her jewels, and would 
gladly have appropriated those to his own use. 

She did not wish ever to see him again, and she dreaded 
any encounter between him and Diego Perez. His j^res- 
ence at her reception to-night would be the snake among 
the flowers. 

As the evening went on, however, she tried to banish all 
thought about this unbidden guest. He would only be one 
among many, she told herself. She could dismiss him 
with a word. 

The dinner seemed a slow business to the women of the 
party, but the financiers enjoyed themselves, and were 
unanimous in their approval of the memi. Joffray told 
his old friend Perez that he had the prettiest wife and the 
best cook in Paris. Hausroth was green with envy, and 
the daughters Hausroth sniggered together at Mme. Perez 
Peru^s Oriental costume, although their own famous 
faiseitr had so cleverly planned the gown that it offered 
no marked eccentricity of character, and might have been 
worn at a ball at the Elysee. 

At ten o’clock Mmb. Perez was stationed in the draw- 
ing-room at the entrance to the marquee where the electric 
lamps were artfully dotted about amid the tropical foliage, 
and the light here and in the adjoining tent was subdued in 
tone, so that when at the stroke of midnight the velvet 
curtains of the supper tent were drawn back the roc’s egg 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


331 


lamps might burst upon the spectators with overpowering 
brilliance. 

The roc’s egg was the one feature of the party with 
which Dolores hoped to startle the spoiled children of 
Paris. 

The two tents for conversation and music filled quickly. 
Everybody had flocked eagerly to see (he beautiful Mine. 
Perez; a curious mingling of the grand luonde and (he 
demi-monde was to be noted among the guests — a new fiat-- 
ure in the life of great cities, and an evidence of the march 
of progress. Great ladies had begged for invitations which 
had been intended only for actresses and for the wives and 
daughters of artists with pen or pencil. Ducal coronets 
were on some of the carriages which were waiting yonder 
in the wintery darkness of the wood. Dukes and duchesses 
had declared that they only wanted to “ look in at the 
millionaire’s party, only to get a glimpse of the million- 
aire’s wife; but finding the palm-shadowed tent a very 
agreeable lounge, and that Faure and Capoul, and Albani 
and Marie Eoze were among the singers, great ladies and 
their cavaliers lingered, and began even to express a mild 
curiosity about supper, which some one had said was to be 
served punctually at midnight. 

Leon Duverdier approached his cousin immediately after 
he had exchanged courtesies with the ancient but beautiful 
Marquise Talorrouge and the lovely comedienne, Clara 
Beauville. He bore himself with his usual assured and 
supercilious air, but Dolores noted that he looked pale and 
ill, and that he was thinner than when she saw him last. 

“ 1 congratulate you upon the success of your fete,” he 
said, holding his cousin’s hand with a lingering pressure. 
“ All the notabilities of Paris are pouring in at your door. 
I am glad 1 returned in the nick of time to assist at your 
triumph.” 

“Was it worth while to return at all after you had 
stayed away so long?” asked Dolores, looking at him with 
a deliberate disdain which liad all the effect of a cold 
douche after the hot room in a Turkish bath. 

“ My dear Dolores, matrimony seems to have made a 
remarkable change in your manner to your own kith and 
kin,” he said, smiling at her. “ I hope your head is not 
going to be turned by social success.” 

“No, my head will not be turned, but my eyes have 


33 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


been opened. You left Paris without a word, to the people 
who — ^who cared for you. Can you wonder if they wore 
enlightened by your conduct, and left off caring for one 
who set so small a value upon the ties of kindred? I think 
I have learned to understand your character during your 
long absence, and that I know you now almost as well as 
Louise knows you. 

His face darkened at the name, and he looked round the 
room and beyond into the crowded tents, as if he were 
searching out an enemy. 

“ I see,^^ he said. “ Louise has been slandering me to 
you. I will not detain you from your guests; but later 
you must give me a few minutes’ quiet conversation. 
I have something important to say to you. It is a matter 
of life and death.” 

“ I recognize the old prelude,” said Dolores; “ that 
means money.” 

Leon Duverdier moved onward into the tent where peo- 
ple were promenading amid a Babel of talk, and to the 
tent beyond, where Oapoul was singing the “ Alleluia 
d ’Amour. ” 

Yes, the party was a success; and walking about quietly 
among people who were for the most part strangers to him, 
Diego Perez was gratified with enthusiastic praises of his 
wife’s grace and beauty, her jewels, her costume, and the 
originality of her reception. True, that he heard more 
than one witticism at his own expense, and was reminded 
of a fact which he had never ignored — the fact that he was 
old, and plain, and insignificant, and that his only value 
in the eyes of the houri in blush-rose satin and many- 
colored gems must jieeds lie in his millions. He heard, 
and he did not despair. There was something — an unde- 
finable change in Dolores of late which told him she was 
not altogether ungrateful, and he thought that if he could 
pension off Mme. Quijada and have his young wife all to 
liimself, free from the mother’s sinister influence, there 
would not be a happier husband in all Paris than he, Perez 
Peru. As for those airy shafts of ridicule which he had so 
dreaded in the past, he was resigned to endure them in the 
future, so long as all went well in his domestic life. 

The concert closed with eclat in a new part-song, com- 
posed by M. Duturque, who had adroitly converted to his 
own use a certain almost forgotten march in an opera by 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


333 


Lulli, a stirring melody which put the audience in good 
humor; and with the last chord the velvet curtains which 
concealed the supper tent were drawn suddenly apart, and 
the roc^s egg lamp bathed the scene in a soft, yet dazzling 
light, which set oil the vivid coloring of fruit and flowers, 
silver-gilt, and Venetian glass, saumon a la Chamhord, 
i\\\^\homard eii aspic, on the fifty supper-tables. 

There was a lively chorus of approval from the guests, 
who had been wondering where the supper was to come 
from, and whether they were going to be put off with tea 
and coffee, ices, and iced drinks at the buffet in the dining- 
room. The fifty tables were occupied as if by magic, and 
two hundred and odd tongues were chattering about the 
roc’s egg. 

'‘'‘Quelle belle idee! Mais c'est une f eerie. II idy a 
que I’ argent pour faire des merveilles. C’est la baguette 
de la Bourse—” and so on, and so on, with illimitable 
variations upon the same theme. 

The supper-tables were occupied till nearly two o’clock, 
and there was no failure in the supplies. At two every- 
body had supped, and almost everybody had dejwted, save 
a few night-bird journalists, who still sat drinking and 
talking at a couple of tables. Among these was Leon Du- 
verdier. 

As the clock struck two the roc’s egg lamp was extin- 
guished, and the curtains fell, leaving the lingering guests 
in total darkness. 

“1 call that about the broadest hint our fair hostess 
could give us,” said the editor of a famous Parisian paper; 
and there was a good deal of talk and laughter from the 
bohemian band during some minutes of darkness, at the 
end of which interval the curtains were drawn back again 
by invisible hands and the last guests strolled through the 
empty tents to the drawing-room, where Dolores was wait- 
ing to bid good-night, with the faithful Duturques to keep 
her company. Mme. Quijada had retired within the last 
hour, and Diego Perez had sneaked off to his own apart- 
ment soon after the opening of the supper-room. 

The editor was full of apologies. 

“ That is the worst of the brotherhood of letters,” he 
said, gayly; “ we are so fond of one another’s society that 
it is much easier to assemble than to disperse us; besides, 
who would be in a hurry to leave fairy-land? If it had not 


334 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


been for the sportiveness of the rock’s egg we should have 
lingered till the sun put that emblem of magic power to 
shame. 

“ I am sorry the lamp behaved so badly/’ said Dolores, 
with an arch smile. 

“ Ah, madame, was there not a fairy in league with the 
lamp, a benevolent fairy, who knows that we are hard- 
working journalists, who can but snatch a few hours’ rest 
between the tail of to-day’s epigram and the head of to- 
morrov/’s, and that we need the quiet of the night to 
elaborate the impromptus of the day?” 

“I must apologize for my husband, gentlemen,” said 
Dolores. “ He is not used to evening parties, so he stole 
away soon after midnight, leaving my mother and me to 
represent him.” 

“Jupiter need not apologize for retiring to his tent of 
clouds when he leaves Juno and Venus in his place,” said 
the youngest of the scribblers, and then each made his fare- 
well bow, till all were gone except Leon. 

He lingered, v/ith a determined air, even after the Du- 
turques had bade good-night the pianiste rapturous at the 
success of ottr party. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

CRUEL AS THE GRAVE. 

Leon Duverdier and his cousin were alone in the draw- 
jiig-room. Through the draped opening of the large cen- 
tral window the dimly lighted marquee loomed shadowy, 
and the tropical foliage had a somber air. The fountaiti 
had left olf playing, the electric light had been turned off 
in all three tents, and the long vista of foliage, and 
tapestry, and velvet-curtained archways took a funereal 
aspect, lighted only by a few small clusters of wax candles 
placed here and there amid the greenery. 

Dolores looked at her cousin, stifled a yawn, and walked 
slowly toward the bell beside the chimney-piece. 

“ I am sure you don’t expect me to be inclined for con- 
versation at this late hour, Leon,” she said, coldly; “ so, 
if you’ll allow me, I’ll order your carriage.” 

“ Please don’t take that useless trouble. 1 have no car- 
riage. 1 came in a cab, and dismissed it. I shall walk 
back to my hotel. ” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


335 


“You are not at your old address?’^ 

“ No; I am staying at the Hotel St. Lazare for a night 
or two. 1 am only in Paris as a bird of passage. I sail 
next week from Havre — for Buenos Ayres. 

“ I hope you will be more fortunate there than 3 ’ou ap- 
pear to have been here/’ said Dolores, calmly. 

He was durnfounded by the coolness of her reply. 
Could so brief a separation have worked such a change in 
the woman who only a few months ago had obviously 
adored him? He was silent for some moments. The tone 
of his reply was constrained. 

“ 1 congratulate you on the wisdom of your course since 
I left Paris,” he said; “you have only followed my ad- 
vice. I often told you that Perez was devoted enough to 
marry you, if you j)layed your cards properly.” 

“ Yes; he is devoted — which is strange — and I am grate- 
ful, which may seem even more extraordinary.” 

“ And 3 ^ou are happy, I suppose?” 

“ Yes, I am actually happy; but I hardly realized till 
to-night how pleasant it is to be the wife of a millionaire.” 

“ 1 am glad you have found out the value of wealth — 
and that your experience has been on the sunny side of the 
question, and not its dark side. I know the value of money 
from the lack of it — but 1 am now on a sure road to fort- 
une — 1 have a better chance and a finer opening in Brazil 
than 1 ever had in my life — ” 

“ 1 congratulate you,” said Dolores. 

“ But 1 can not grasp this golden opportunity without 
a certain capital in hand. Money makes money, Dolores. 
A man must sow the golden seed — if only a handful of 
gold dust — before he can reap the golden harvest. Fort- 
une is at my door, if 1 can let her in; but 1 must first find 
the key that will open the door.” 

“ Your conversation really abounds in allegories,” re- 
plied Dolores; “but though the variations are new, the 
tune is always the same. No, Leon, I can not provide you 
with the capital for your Brazilian venture. I mean to 
be a lo 3 "al wife to Diego Perez, and I will do nothing under- 
hand or secret — nothing that could awaken one jealous 
doubt in his mind. I know enough of his character to 
know that with him jealousy would be terrible.” 

“ Then you will do nothing for me? You are wallow- 


336 WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 

ing in wealth, and you will not lift your finger to help 

“ Oh, yes, I will do much more than lift my finger. 
Your new venture is to be made in South America, where 
my husband is a power. He knows every inch of the 
country — every speculation and enterprise that has been 
made there. 1 will introduce you to him, and ask him to 
help you. 

And you think he will help me?^^ 

“ Yes, when I plead for you.'’* 

“ I can not wait for such a slow process as that, Dolores. 
I know what these old men are, and how long they delib- 
erate before they will trust a young man with a thousand 
pounds sterling, even if he could buy the philosopher’s 
stone for the money, and offered to share the profits of the 
transaction. 1 want money at once, Dolores. Can’t you 
understand that two or three hundred pounds to-night 
would be worth a thousand next week? And I know you 
must have as much as that.” 

“ 1 have not the tenth part of two hundred pounds,” 
answered his cousin, coolly. “ I have everything in the 
world I can wish for, but since I have been Diego’s wife I 
have had hardly any money. I am Madame Perez. The 
name is enough. I can order anything I want from any 
tradesman in Paris, and my name is all I need give in ex- 
change. Diego pays all the bills as fast as they come in. 
I have nothing to do with money; so you see if I were ever 
so willing to help you I couldn’t do it.” 

There was a pause, during which the man who called 
himself Leon Duverdier took two or three turns up and 
down the room in troubled meditation. Then he stopped 
suddenly and confronted Dolores with a frowning brow. 

“It is mere idle sophistication to talk to me in this 
strain,” he said. “You can help me if you like, and you 
know it. If you have not bank-notes or louis d’or, you 
have money’s worth. You have jewels which I could turn 
dnto immediate cash at the Mont de Pietc. 1 only ask for 
the loan of a few of your gewgaws, those you value least, 
that 1 may raise money upon them for a month or so. 1 
will remit the money to a friend in Paris as soon as I am 
in funds, and the jewels shall be safely delivered into your 
hands, at the hour and place which you yourself shall ap- 
point. Will that do for you?” 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


337 


“ No, it will not. I will not trust you with one of my 
husband’s gifts — indeed, I dare not. J3iego remembers 
every jewel he ever gave me, and asks me from time to 
time to wear particular ornaments. 1 should be disgraced 
if 1 could not comply with his request.” 

The argument which followed was long and angry. 
Leon grew desperate as he found Dolores firm in her re- 
fusal. 

“ You had better not goad me too far,” he hissed in her 
ear. as she shrunk from him, with her back against the 
angle of the low marble mantel - piece, and her hand 
stretched toward the bell. “It is a very small thing I 
have asked of you. Yet the consequences of your refusal 
may be more disastrous than you can foresee. 1 may be 
tempted to throw up the sponge, and to let the world know 
some secrets in my life, and your mother’s share in them. 
That revelation would be a worse disgrace for you than the 
loss of a diamond necklace.” 

He was gone, leaving Dolores mystified by his parting 
words, but not greatly alarmed. It seemed to her that 
those words were an idle threat, and that all she had to do 
was to stand firm in her duty to her husband, who was 
powerful enough to protect her from her kifisnian’s malice. 
There was nothing in her past relations wi(h Leon wlii(.*h 
could bring evil to her in the future. She had loved him 
with a sentimental girlish fancy, which had been fostered 
by the monotony of her secluded existence. Now that she 
had begun to taste the sweets of life, and to understand the 
omnipotence of wealth, she looked back and wondered at 
her girlhood’s idle faficy. 

“ How could I have ever been blind to his selfishness 
and meanness?” she wondered, when the outer door had 
closed upon her cousin. 

It was four o’clock upon a winter morning. The last 
faint glow had faded out of the logs, and Dolores shivered 
in her splendor as she surveyed her dazzling image in the 
vast sheet of glass behind a low jardinh'e filled with hya- 
cinths and narcissus. The image which met her gaze was 
radiant with gems and brilliant coloring, but the face be- 
neath the jeweled turban was pale and weary. 

“ It has been a long, long night,” she thought, “but 
at last I have made my debut in Parisian society. Perez 


388 


WHOSE WAS THK HAND? 


Peru’s wife is no longer a person to be hidden away in an 
obscure lodging.” 

Tlie servants, who bad been supping luxuriously in their 
own quarters, now appeared, sober and serious of aspect, 
apparently intent upon the safe adjustment of looks and 
bolts, and the putting away of stray valuables. The last 
glimmer of light had been extinguished in the marquees, 
and to-morrow morning all that fairy scene would be taken 
to pieces like a child’s puzzle, and carted away, while the 
roc’s egg lamp would be sold at a sacrifice to some enter- 
prising proprietor of cafe or music hall. 

The footman drew aside the j^lush curtains, and shut 
the wide plate-glass window, which fastened in the usual 
manner of French casements, and it may be that under 
the influence of truffled turkey and champagne he was 
somewhat uncertain in twisting the long brass bolt into its 
socket. 

“ Is all safe?” asked Dolores, listlessly, as she took up 
her ostrich fan, and moved slowly toward the door. 

“Yes, madame. ” 

“ Then you may go to bed, all of you.” 

“ Madame will require the services of Elise at her toilet?” 

“ Not to-night. Tell her to bring me my chocolate at 
ten to-morrow morning, and on no account to disturb me 
before that hour.” 

Now that the tension of supreme excitement was relaxed 
Dolores felt tired to death. She had been moving about 
among her guests, and talking and laughing at every sally 
of wit or journalist for five mortal hours, to say nothing 
of those three quieter hours during which she had presided 
at her husband’s dinner-party. She could hardly crawl 
upstairs to her luxurious bedroom, and she was far too 
weary to submit to the somewhat oppressive attentions of 
a highly trained lady’s-maid — a maid who had lived but 
lately with haggard old age, which required to be put to- 
gether bit by bit, and composed and painted into a ghastly 
semblance of youth and beauty. She had but just strength 
to unclasp her jewels— her necklace of matchless pearls — 
the stars and clusters and hearts and horseshoes of dia- 
monds, emeralds, and sapphires which studded her bodice, 
the crescents which Hashed from her dark hair. She was 
just able to take off all these splendors, and to drop them 
in a careless heap upon her dressing-table; and then she 


V/HOSE WAS THE HAND Y 


S^9 


exchanged her silken garment for a loose muslin peignoir, 
threw back the satin-covered eider-down, and flung herself 
upon the bed, overcome with sleep. 

All was still upon that upper floor. Diego Perez was sleep- 
ing the tranquil slumber of the man who knows that all his 
investments are safe, and that some of them are yielding 
him fifteen per cent. Mine. Quijada was sleeping the 
heavy sleep of senses drugged with chloral. The servants 
had crept up to their attic in the elegant Italian roof — that 
these cubicula were cold in winter and hot in summer had 
but little disturbed the rest of the architect who planned 
the villa — and on all eyelids in the house sleep lay heavy, 
save in that one modest chamber where Louise Marcet lay 
in her narrow bed, and turned upon her pillow from time 
to time in the long intervals between her brief slumbers. 
The time was when the tired work-girPs night had been a 
night of a single sleep, but since that perilous malady in 
which reason had been nearly wrecked in the agonized 
brain, Louise had never known what it was to enjoy long 
and tranquil slumbers. To-night her nerves had been 
shaken by the noises within and without the house, the din 
of talk and laughter, the rattle of silver and glass, the loud 
music of a brass band playing waltzes and mazurkas, the 
sound of singing, and the roll of carriage wheels. Gayety 
of this kind had lost all its fascination for her. She had 
never tasted such pleasures, and she had no curiosity about 
that brilliant world of the rich and the well-born in which 
she had no part. Her day of happiness had been as brief 
as a butterfly’s summer; her pleasure had been of the 
simplest. She had known the passion of love only in its 
most ideal aspect. She had never been sickened by the 
reverse of the picture. The man she had exalted into a 
hero had been her hero to the end of his life, and her re- 
gret for him was so much the keener that she had never 
had cause to doubt his honor or his worthiness to be loved. 
Thus the girl’s innocent love of a summer’s day had be- 
come the settled worship of a dead lover, and the wom- 
an’s heart was dead to all but the broken dream of the 
lovesick girl. 

Darkness closed round the villa in the bois, in those chill 
hours between night and morning, bitter cold in the garden 
outside, but tempered within these walls by the calorifere 


340 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


ill the basement. There were only two lamps burning in 
the house — one (he colored glass lantern in the hall, where 
the lowered gas gave a subdued glimmer that made the 
shadows blacker on the staircase and lauding; the other, 
the little antique silver lamp that hung above the bed where 
Dolores lay in the happy sleep of youth and health, and a 
heart at ease. 

Not a sound in that sleeping household, save the striking 
of various clocks, with more or less musical chime. Five 
o’clock! Yes, there is another sound. As the hammer 
falls on the gong for the fifth time there is the sound of a 
window opening softly and slowly on the ground floor. 
Then a pause — and then the cautious opening of a door — 
another pause, and again another sound, the stealthy tread 
of lightly shod feet on the velvet pile of the staircase. 

Louise Marcet hears those sounds faintly in her sleep. 
Are the servants going down already? It is early for them, 
considering the lateness of the hour at which they went to 
rest. She is sleeping somewhat more deeply than usual, 
worn out by the noises that kept her awake till an hour or 
so ago. It is her habit to rise when the servants go down 
in the morning, to be as early as the earliest of the house- 
hold, and to see that the day’s work is begun betimes; but 
this morning her senses are dull, she mixes the sounds of 
those footsteps with a confused dream of the past. It is a 
summer Sunday morning, and her kindly neighbor is com- 
ing to call her, that she may be up and dressed and away to 
the station of St. Lazare to meet the kindly Englishman 
for that promised excursion to Marly le Roi. 

Fond dream of days long vanished. Fancy bridges the 
dismal gulf of years and the grave where her lover lies; 
and she hears his voice and sees his face again just as she 
heard and saw him more than twenty years ago. 

Suddenly the face fades, the voice is silent. She starts 
up in her bed shuddering, her blood turned to ice at the 
sound of a woman’s shriek — either of fear or pain. She 
springs from her bed, throws on the peignoir that lies ready 
in the chair close by, and moves out to the landing, and to 
her cousin’s room. The door is open, and in the dim light 
of the night-lamp she sees a white flgure lying on the 
carpet, face downward, and standing by the dressing-table 
she sees her brother engaged in thrusting the heaped up 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


341 


jewels into his pockets. While she stands in the door- way 
transfixed, he crams the last of the ornaments out of sight 
and turns to leave the room without one look at the pros- 
trate form lying near the bed. He recoils with an angry 
oaih at the sight of Louise. 

“ Stand out of the way,’^ he says savagely, “ or Til settle 
you as Fve settled her. 

“ Thief — murderer!’* 

“ Bosh! She’s only stunned. It’ll be worse for you 
tlian for her if you don’t hold your tongue. Let me pass, 
1 say!” 

” Not with those jewels in your possession,” she says, 
faci]ig him fearlessly. Before he can prevent her she has 
locked tlie door and put the key in her pocket. 

” Thief and murderer, your first crime has gone un- 
punished because my voice has not been lifted up against 
you — but there shall be no second crime that 1 can hinder. 
I am trusted in this house, and I will guard my cousin’s 
property. If you have killed her your life shall pay for 
hers. You shall not leave this room until you have given 
up those jewels, and until I see if she is living or dead.” 

She moves toward the figure on the ground, and as she 
does so he looks around and grasps the situation. There 
is no other way out of the room. The only other door 
stands wide open, revealing the interior of a bath-room in 
which there is no door — only a great marble bath and 
white paneled walls. He grasps Louise by the shoulder, 
and snatches the key from the wide pocket of her dressing- 
gown. 

“ Stand aside and keep a quiet tongue in your head!” he 
vvhisj>ers, threateningly; and then as she clings about him, 
clutching the collar of his coat, holding him with all the 
force of excitement that has reached fever pitch, he sees 
her heat] flung back and her lips parting in a cry for help. 
Another instant and she will raise the house. A cruel 
blow from his clinched hand stifles the cry upon her whiten- 
ing lips, and then the same deadly hand snatches a knife 
from his breast pocket, a knife that opens with a spring. 

A thrust, and another, and then he grows mad with rage, 
the blind unreasoning fury of a savage beast, as the lips 
still strive to cry aloud, and the eyes still stare at him 
wildly, and the clinging hands still hold him, and so an- 
other, and yet another thrust of the murderous knife, till 


342 WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 

one last gurgling sound escapes from those distorted lips, 
the stare grows fixed and dull, the fingers loosen, and the 
bleeding form falls at his feet. 

He unlocks the door and runs down-stairs, splashed with 
her blood, a sister’s life blood, and creeps out by the way 
he came in, stealing through the empty tents, spurning 
the fading flowers as he dashes out into the cold night, 
through the silken draperies that mark an opening in the 
canvas. 

He did not mean murder when he entered the house, 
least of all a sister’s murder; but he meant plunder, and 
he has secured the booty. At day-break he will leave for 
Dunkirk, from Dunkirk to Holland, where he will dispose 
of the gems, minus their delicate Tiffany settings. 

Just at the last moment he remembers that he must 
hide the blood upon his clothes. The stains are darkest 
and biggest upon his shirt and waistcoat, as his victim 
clung about him in the death struggle. 

He creeps back into the house, finds some overcoats 
hanging in a vestibule, and takes an Inverness, which is 
just long enough to hide his figure to the knees. 

This precaution is unlucky, for in going into the garden 
he falls into the arms of a gendarme, who, riding quiet- 
ly by in the night silence, had noticed the opening of the 
little door in the marquee. The gendarme dismounts, 
and waits to see who will emerge from that mysterious lit- 
tle door at a q-uarter past five in the morning. 

And so Leon Duverdier, alias Claude Morel, falls into 
the clutches of the law, and is shut up«?« secret in a felon’s 
cell, to be taken out at intervals and interrogated by the 
jnge d’ instruction; and before night all Paris knows that 
there has been a daring robbery and a brutel murder in 
J^erez Peru’s villa, that the beautiful Mrae. Perez has been 
struck to the ground senseless in the attempt to defend her 
property, and lies in a very precarious condition, and that 
poor old Perez is half mad with grief and anxiety. 


CHAPTER XXX. 
daisy’s diary. 

It is nearly a month since I last opened this book, a 
month which has brought me daily nearer and nearer in 
union with him who is to share all my life, and whom I 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


343 


am to love and obey. Yes, obey; the word suggests not 
the faintest sense of humiliation. I am proud to have a 
master, such a master. I never had that kind of feeling 
with my poor dear Cyril. On the contrary, I felt as if he 
had been given to me as my slave, a person to order about. 

For the first few days after that terrible revelation about 
my step-father I kept my ghastly secret. 1 could not trust 
even him whom I had trusted with my whole heart and my 
whole life. I feared that if I told Gilbert my conviction 
of Ambrose Arden^s guilt, if I showed him how link by 
link the chain of circumstantial evidence might be put 
togelher until the circle was complete, he might consider it 
his duty to bring about a public investigation, and thus 
condemn my mother to the horror of knowing what man- 
ner of man she had married. But after torturing myself 
for those few days of puzzled thought and nights of fever- 
ish unrest, I could bear my burden no longer. Gilbert saw 
that there was something amiss with me, that even his 
presence could not make me happy, and he pressed and 
pressed me to confide in him. And so I told him all the 
dismal story, and my reasons for believing that my father^s 
murder had been plotted by his friend. 

I could see by his darkening countenance as he listened 
that he was of my opinion, but he answered gravely and 
deliberately: 

“ Your theory is plausible, Daisy, yet there is no inci- 
dent in life which may not bear a double interpretation. I 
certainly believe Duverdier to be the murderer, as surely 
as I believe him to be Claude Morel under another name; 
and granting that he is the guilty man, it is assuredly a 
strange thing that he should dog your step-father^s foot- 
steps in this quiet place, and that your lover should re- 
nounce the happiness of his life, and go into exile, after 
overhearing a conversation between his father and that 
man. The links are strong links; but the evidence is not 
of a kind that would be accepted in a court of law, and I 
doubt if the law will ever touch the man whose moral guilt, 
granting him guilty, is greater than the guilt of the shed- 
der of blood. 

“ I donT want the law to touch him; 1 donT want my 
mother ever to know how cruelly she has been cheated and 
deceived. I only want you to understand the horror of it 
all, and that this man with whom I have to live in daily 


344 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


frieiiilsnip, or the appearance of friendship, is of all men 
upon earth the most abhorrent to me.’" 

Half the weight of my burden was lifted off my shoulders 
after I had shared my trouble with Gilbert. He is so wise, 
so thoughtful, so just, and temperate in his judgments. 
He would not allow that the case was established against 
that wretched man. It was a case for grave doubt, he told 
me. The circumstances were full of darkest suspicions; 
but it vvoiild be dangerous to condemn a fellow-creature, 
above all a frieiid to whom 1 owed so much, upon such evi- 
denoe. 

I shuddered at the word friend. 

“ Oh, 1 was so fond of him once,” I said. “ I used to 
sit upon his knee and put my arms round his neck. I 
called him uncle because I could not bear to think that he 
was not related to me. I used to run from my father to 
him, and oue was almost as dear to me as the other. And 
now to know that he is utterly base, false, and cruel, inex- 
orably cruel, cruel as death itself.” 

“ We know nothing, Daisy,” said my dearest, in his 
calm, grave voice; “ there is nothing absolute or conclusive 
in all your evidence. The signs of trouble of mind which 
you have noticed in your step-father may be only the in- 
dications of physical disease. We must wait, and watch, 
if need be, and whether this dire suspicion of yours be 
brought more fully home to us, or whether we have reason 
to doubt the grounds upon which it rests, there is at least 
one point upon which we can have no hesitation. The 
knowledge of evil must be kept from your poor mother.’" 

I was inexpressibly comforted by his counsel, and felt 
that I could better endure to live in the same house with 
my step-fa 111 ‘r. I even began to falter somewhat in my 
judgment of him, and had it not been for the mystery of 
Cyril’s conduct, which 1 could account for in no other 
manner, I might have thought myself the victim of a de- 
lusion, cruel alike to me and to the man whom I sus- 
pected. 

But I could not forget the evidence of Cyril’s face, 
which told of dire calamity, or the stern resolve with which 
he canceled tire bond between us. His tone and manner 
were those of a man who was fulfilling a painful duty, who 
submitted himself to a cruel destiny. 

Nor was there other and nearer evidence wanting in my 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


U5 


step-father's manner to me after the change in my manner 
to him which must have been obvious, although 1 set a 
watch upon myself always in my mother^s presence. On 
the rare occasions when Mr. Arden and 1 were alone to- 
gether I maintained a resolute silence, and on no such oc- 
casion did he ever question me as to my altered bearing. 
It seemed to me that he submitted to my estrangement as 
a part of his doom, and that he tacitly accepted my con- 
demnation of him. Not by one word or look did he ever 
seek to evoke the old tenderness of our relations. He who 
until a few weeks ago had been to me as a second father 
was content to become a stranger, and to endure the insult 
of my sullen silence; content also to play the hypocrite in 
his wife^s presence, and to affect that he and I were on the 
old affectionate terms. When mother asked me to play to 
him he praised my playing, and asked for this or that 
sonata or set of variations. Oh, what a dreadful life it 
would be if it were not for the comfort and support my 
true lover has given me throughout this trial! 

And all this time there has been an air of gayety at 
River Lawn, and mother and Gilbert and 1 have been full 
of preparations for the great change in all our lives. It 
will hardly be such a change for mother and me, though, 
as it might have been under less blessed conditions; for I 
shall be her next-door neighbor, and shall be running in 
and out of the dear home garden every day, and she can 
run into my gardens and the ever-lovely and beloved arbor 
where my sovereign lord and king first declared his love 
can be common ground for both of us. I shall keep copies 
of my most adorable poets there, and a sketching-block and 
color-box, and Gilbert shall have a box of cigars or cigar- 
ettes in the handy little cupboard where I used to keep my 
toy cups and saucers when I was a child. 

No; my wedding-day will bring no severance between 
mother and me, and by and by, when the end which I 
foresee shall come, and the shadow is lifted from her life, 
I shall have that dear mother all to myself again, as I had 
in the tranquil years of her widowhood. 

It is wicked, perhaps, to take comfort in the thought of 
any one^s death; yet can I wish a traitor's life to be pro- 
longed? Can I fail to see the hand of God in that gradual 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


346 

darkeiiitig of the gloom which encircles him — the gradual 
working of that slow poison we call remorsei* 

Again there has been talk of my trousseau^ and this 
time mother has not found me cold or indiiferent. I have 
taken a keen delight in everything, especially the house- 
linen, about which I am as earnest as if I had spun it my- 
self, like an industrious Swedish or Norwegian maiden, 
and had hoarded it in great oaken presses to await my be- 
trothal. I am delighted to say that Gilbert’s hereditary 
linen closet was a vast collection of rags, beautiful damask 
cloths, with the P'lorestan coat of arms woven in the fabric, 
smooth and lustrous as satin, but as transparent as gauze 
when the good old housekeeper held them up to the light. 

“ Single gentlemen never do think of such things,” she 
said, apologetically; “ I’ve told Mr. Florestan often and 
often that new table-cloths were wanted, but he always for- 
got to order them; and then he was here so seldom, and 
that made him careless about the house.” 

“Of course,” cried I; “what should he know about 
table-cloths?” 

And then mother and I held a grand consultation, and 
selected the loveliest patterns, and sent off a big order to a 
firm in Belfast, and I felt that I was encouraging the man- 
ufactures of the sister isle. There are Irish poplins in my 
troKi^seau, too — soft, lustrous, delicious — warm and sub- 
stantial wear for my winter honey-moon. Mother thinks 
of everything, seasons and occasions, comfort and dignity. 
Without folly or extravagance, my trousseau will be per- 
fect — worthy to be exhibited as an example of sterling 
British common sense, as opposed to French frivolity and 
American ostentation. 

We are to go to the south for our honey-moon, but not 
straight away to fashionable Cannes or cosmopolitan Nice. 
We are to go first to Bordeaux, and then to Pau and Biar- 
ritz, and afterward to Toulouse, Carcassonne, Nismes, etc., 
and so on by easy stages to Marseilles, and thence to 
Cannes, just to wind up with the Prince of Wales’s week, 
and the dances at the two clubs. I shall be an old mar- 
ried woman by that time, capable of chaperoning my un- 
married cousins if they should happen to be at Cannes 
with my aunt just then. They generally go south in early 
spring, and leave the doctor to make money in Harley 
Street. 


WHOSE W^AS THE HAND ? 


347 


They all came down to River Lawn last week to con- 
gratulate me upon my “promotion/' as Flora called it, 
and they all, aunt included, seem to think I have done a 
grand thing in getting myself engaged to Gilbert Florcslan. 

“Not because he is rich," explained Flora, “ for meas- 
ured by our modern necessities he is little better than a 
pauper, but because he is unmistakably county. Your 
relations need never be ashamed of him." 

“ That is a comfort," said I, enraged at her imperti- 
nence; “ but 1 hope you don't suppose I accepted Gilbert 
in order to gratify my relations or come up to the require- 
ments of Harley Street. 1 did not accept him because he 
is county, and I should have been just as deeply in love 
with him if he had been a beggar." 

“ Ah, you may think so, and most engaged girls talk in 
that style," said Flora; “ but I have never heard of any- 
body in society marrying a beggar since the time of King 
Cophetua, and no doubt he was sorry for it afterward." 

These cousins of mine are the very essence of worldli- 
ness, and 1 seldom stoop to argue about matters of feeling 
with either of them. They have been on the point of 
making great matches ever since they were presented, but 
the business has always stopped short of actuality; and 
Aunt Emily says that marriage, from a lady's standpoint, 
will soon become impossible. 

“ It is easy enough for an only child like you," she said. 
“ Of course you are anybody's money; but my poor girls 
have nothing but their beauty and their accomplishments, 
and men nowadays are utterly sordid." 

This was a speech which would have made me wretched 
were it possible for me to doubt my true lover; but all the 
discontented mothers in England might hint and insinuate 
for a live-long summer day without ruffling my great con- 
tent. My heart, so far as Gilbert is concerned, is as placid 
as a summer lake encircled by mountains. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

“ I WILL KEPAY." 

This morning the question was mooted: Who was to 
give me away? It was just as breakfast was over and Mr. 
Arden had not yet gone off to his hermitage on the other 
side of the lane, 


348 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


“ Your step-father is of course the proper 2)erson/^ said 
my mother, looking at her husband wdth her sweet, gentle 
smile, a look I understand so well, a look which means 
kindliness, esteem, respect, consideration, but which never 
yet meant love. 

“ No,^' 1 cried, hastily; “ there is only one person who 
must give me to my husband, and that person is my 
mother. 

“ My dearest, it would be so unusual for a woman — 
began mother. 

Mr. Arden interrupted her hastily. 

“ Not in the case of a widow, Clara,^^ he said, in his 
calm, measured way, as if there were no hint of ill-feeling 
to him in my hasty protest. “ I agree with Daisy — you 
are the fittest jierson to give your daughter to the man of 
her choice. The act will stamp your ajoproval of the 
union; and Daisy is in the right in wishing that it should 
be so. ” 

Twice he mentioned me by my old familiar name with- 
out the faintest emotion. No witness of that scene could 
have suspected from his tone or conduct that there was any 
gulf between us. I sat with my eyes fixed upon the table- 
cloth, waiting for him to leave us before I could feel hap- 
2)y or at ease. 

It was on the morning after this that the dreadful shock 
came, and still this man of blood was calm and collected, 
equal to the occasion. 

The paj)ers are delivered at River Lawn at about ten 
oYlock, and on this j^articular morning we were later than 
usual at breakfast, and the meal was only just over when 
Mead brought in his tray of papers ready aired and cut. 

My step-father took the “ Tinies,^^ my mother the 
“ Morning Post. I am only interested in Mead’s tray on 
the mornings that bring the “ World,” “ Punch,” or 
“ Truth;” so on Tuesday morning there was nothing to 
claim my attention, and I sat idly by while the other two 
read their papers. 

An exclamation from my mother startled me from a 
reverie. “ Oh, God!” she cried, rising hurriedly and go- 
ing over to her husband, with the newspaper in her hand, 
“ this must be the hand of Providence! ft has come, it 
has come at last! ‘ Vengeance is mine; I will repay^ saith 


WHOSE W^AS THE HAND ? 


349 


the Lord/ My husband’s murderer will be punished — 
after all these years! Ambrose, do you see, do you know 
what has happened? Have you read?” 

“ Have I read what? My dear Clara, are you mad?” 
he asked, looking up at her wonderingly, as she stood be- 
fore him, with white cheeks and dilated eyes. 

“ Have you read the French news? A dreadful murder 
— the murder of a woman by a man who is supposed to be 
her brother — by a man called Leon Duverdier, alias Claude 
Morel, the man who killed my husband!” 

“No, I have not seen the French news,” he ai:fewered, 
slowly. 

A lie! The paper lay under his hand as he spoke, 
and I saw the heading of the column: Paris. By Tele- 
graph. 

“ Read, theii j read the account of the murder, and of 
the man. He is in prison. He was caught at once, this 
time, taken red-handed. The police in Paris are better 
than the feeble wretches who let my dear love’s murderer 
go scot-free. Read, read, read, Ambrose!” 

She was beside herself with agitation. Her husband 
started to his feet, and put his arm round her and held her 
to his breast, held her against that false and cruel heart, 
whose baseness she knew not. 

“ Control yourself, Clara, for pity’s sake. Remember 
we have no sure ground for believing that Morel was the 
murderer. ” 

“ Yes, yes, we have conclusive ground. The use of his 
sister’s name to decoy my husband; that in itself was all- 
sufficient proof. And now, see, the sister is murdered, 
brutally, savagely stabbed to death by the same hand.” 

“ If there has been murder done the murderer will suffer 
for his crime, and in that case your husband will be 
avenged.” 

“ No, no; that is not enough. That other, more delib- 
erate crime must be brought home to him. His judges 
must know what a wretch he is. French juries are so 
merciful. He will be recommended to mercy. Only the 
murder of a sister, on the spur of the moment. There will 
be the plea of extenuating circumstances. But let them 
know how he lured an unoffending man to a lonely room 
and killed him in cold blood, for sordid gain, and even a 
French jury will condemn him to death.” 


350 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


“ My dearest, you are talking wildly. A man can only 
be tried for one crime at a time. If he be acquitted of 
murdering his sister, he can then be indicted for the mur- 
der of liobert Hatreli. You must be calm and patient.’’ 

“ Let us go to Paris to-night.” 

“ I will go there if you like, and find out all about the 
man and the crime. It would be useless for you to go.” 

“No, no; I want to be there, in the city where the 
murderer is waiting for his doom.” 

“ My dear Clara, I can not allow you to travel under 
such conditions. I would not answer for your reason if 
you were to go upon such a journey. Nor could you possi- 
bly leave your daughter on any such mad errand. What- 
ever has to be done 1 will do. I will go to-night, and will 
remain in Paris till after this man’s trial. I will find out 
who he really is, and if he is identical with the Claude 
Morel whose sister your husband once admired. You may 
rely upon me to do everything that is necessary or expedi- 
ent. Only for God’s sake be calm, be reasonable. Pe- 
member how precious your life and reason are to your 
daughter and to me. Remember how both trembled in 
the balance years ago in this house.” 

My poor dear mother commanded herself by a great 
effort. I could see how she struggled with her agitation, 
how earnestly she strove to be cairn. 

“ I never thought that the hour of retribution would 
come,” she said. “ Oh, the wretch, the heartless wretch, 
to strike a strong man down in the flower of his age, to cut 
short so dear a life! No, I will not talk of him any more, 
Ambrose,” she said, in answer to a warning look from her 
husband. “ I will be calm and patient, and wait for the 
end. It is coming, in God’s own good time. Y"ou need 
not be afraid about me. Daisy and I will stay here quietly 
while you go to Paris. And you will send me daily re- 
ports. You will not keep me in the dark — ” 

“ Not for an hour.” 

They went out of the room together, mother leaning on 
his arm, confiding in him and relying upon him, as if he 
were the best of men. I was left alone to think over what 
had happened, and to consider how this new phase of our 
terrible history was likely to affect my dear mother. 

First, I read the account of the murder in the “ Times,” 
U brutal murder, the fict of a thief and desperado. I will 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


351 


not sully this book by recording it liere, since its only 
bearing on my life lies in the fact that this wretch who 
murdered his sister in a villa in the Bois de Boulogne the 
night before last is in all probability the wretch who killed 
my father. I read the savage history, and then I thought, 
and thought, and thought; but only felt so much the more 
hopeless and miserable; and I saw how futile it was for me 
to think alone, while the other half of me was not by me 
to help me out of every difficulty. So I just ran- into the 
lobby, put on my hat, and went out into the garden to see 
if I could find my dearest and best, who would be able to 
give me wise counsel, and whose very voice would enable 
me to keep up my courage were I hemmed round by diffi- 
culties. 

It is wintery weather everywhere in this last month of the 
year, but our gardens are so rich in conifers, laurel, and 
arbutus that they never look bare or cold; and the shrub- 
bery is so sheltered by deodar and cupressus, that an in- 
valid might walk there even on the coldest morning. I 
knew that it was Gilbert’s habit to smoke his after-break- 
fast cigarette on the other side of the fence, and that I was 
most likely to find him within call. Mother had allowed 
him to make a gate of communication between his shrub- 
bery and ours, not many paces from the arbor where I 
first discovered that I adored him. I found him this morn- 
ing standing close by this gate, with a very grave counte- 
nance, evidently on watch for me, and I saw at a glance 
that he had read all about the murder. 

He had, and we talked the hideous story over together. 

“ How will it affect Mr. Arden?” I asked. 

” If he is the guilty wretch you think him it may affect 
him most terribly. The man Morel has been taken red- 
handed, and can not escape condemnation. If he is the 
murderer of Denmark Street, if your step-father prompted 
that murder, as you believe, he niay, out of sheer devilry, 
make a clean breast of it before he goes to the guillotine, 
and denounce his accomplice.” 

“ And then my mother will know everything, and the 
rest of her life will be made miserable,” said I. 

My step-father left us this evening. I felt sick with ap- 
prehension and misery when I saw mother bidding him 
good-bye in the hall^ while the carriage waited to drive him 


352 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


to the station; she so full of kindliness and concern for 
his comfort on the cold night journey, he pale and somber, 
speaking with evident effort. 

“You are looking so ill to-night, Ambrose,’^ she said. 
“ I fear you are hardly equal to the journey and the 
trouble that may come afterward.’^ 

“ I must face both, Clara. My chief anxiety is about 
you and your peace of mind,'^ he answered, gravely. “If 
you will only be true to yourself I fear nothing. You 
have your daughter and her husband to think of; new 
duties, new ties, the beginning of a new existence.’^ 

It seemed to me as if he were renouncing all share in 
her life, all claim to her affection. He looked at me 
earnestly, question! ugly, and then as I made no movement 
toward him, he said quietly: 

“ Good-night, and good-bye, Daisy. 

He turned on the threshold and took my mother in his 
aims and kissed her forehead and her lips with a sudden 
fervor that transformed him. 

The pallid, care-worn face flushed and smiled, the dull 
and sunken eyes brightened. It was for a moment only. 
His valet warned him that there was no time to lose; he 
stepped into the brougham, the door was shut, and he was 
gone. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 
daisy's diary. 

It is the eve of my wedding-day, the eve of St. Valen- 
tine’s-day; Gilbert is to be my Valentine to-morrow and 
forever. 

And now in this deep silence of after midniglit I will close 
the record of my life as an unmarried woman. The life 
that will begin to-morrow will mark the opening of a. new 
volume in my history; but the old book shall be my friend 
and confidant still, for I shall be able to praise my hus- 
band in these pages as I should never dare to praise him to 
any living listener, least of all to his modest, unpretend- 
ing self. 

I shall close the record of my girlish years, and with it 1 
hope closes the tragedy of my own-and my mother's life. 
God grant that bloodshed and guilt and treachery may have 
no further influence upon her life and mine, and that the 


WHOSE WAS TRV. HAND? 


353 


road that lies before us may pass through a peaceful and a 
smiling land, where crime and sin will have no part in our 
destiny. 

^ The interval between my step-father’s journey to Paris 
and the end of the year was a time of keenest anxiety for 
me and for Gilbert, who shared and lightened all my cares. 
We watched the three principal Paris papers, which Gilbert 
ordered to be sent him daily, and watched wi(h intense ex- 
pectation for any notice of the murderer. Morel. The 
actual facts recorded were few, beyond the particulars of 
the murder which had appeared in the first instance; but 
there was a great deal of descriptive writing bearing more 
or less upon the crime. Something of this kind appeared 
in one or the other of the papers nearly every day. Some- 
times there was a paragraph about the prisoner’s ante- 
cedents, the part he took in the riots and brutalities of the 
Commune, the manner of his escape when the Versailles 
troops got possession of Paris, and many other facts or fic- 
tions about his past life. Gilbert told me that I must not 
bdieve more than one fourth of any such articles or para- 
graphs in a Parisian newspaper. 

One day there appeared a long account of the villa 
which was the scene of the murder, an article in which the 
luxury and splendor of the house were minutely described. 
Another article in the same paper gave a glowing descrip- 
tion of the prisoner’s cousin, a beautiful young woman, 
married to one of the richest men in Paris. Scandal about 
this young woman and her mother was freely published, 
cruel imputations against their characters; but there was 
not one line in any of the papers which hinted at Claude 
Morel’s identity with the murderer of Denmark Street. 

“ The police know all about him,” said Gilbert, “ but 
they are keeping dark. A man can not be tried for two 
crimes at the same time. Were there any chance of 
Morel’s acquittal he could be arrested and brought to Lon- 
don to be confronted with the witnesses who could identify 
the murderer of Denmark Street.” 

My step-father remained in Paris for nearly a month, 
during which time he wrote at least twice a week to my 
mother. She read portions of his letters to me. He had 
seen the police, and they had told him that there was very 
little doubt of the prisoner’s execution. The crime was 
too utterly brutal to enlist the sympathies of even a French 


354 


WHOSE >VAS THE HAND? 


jury. He would be found guilty without extenuating cir- 
cumstances. He would, perhaps appeal to the Court of 
Cassation, but his appeal would be rejected. 

In a later letter my step-father wrote that he had with • 
great difficulty obtained an interview with the prisoner. 
He had taxed him with the murder in Denmark Street, 
but Morel had denied all knowledge of that crime. The 
letter described him as an obdurate villain. 

The trial took place in the second week of December. 
The prisoner's cousin, Mme. Perez, was the chief witness 
against him. She described how he had appealed to her 
for money, or for jewels to convert into money, within two 
hours of the murder; and how she had refused to give him 
either money or jewels, upon which he left the house, angry 
and menacing. She described how she was startled from 
lier sleep by the sound of footsteps in her room, and on 
opening her eyes saw the prisoner standing before her toilet- 
table, deliberately filling his pockets with her jewels, which 
she had worn in great profusion upon that particular even- 
ing. She told the court how she had sprung from h*er 
bed, intending to ring for help, but before she could reach 
the elecrtic-bell the accused struck her to the ground. She 
remembered nothing after that blow, which had inflicted a 
permanent injury upon the sight of one eye. She had 
only just recovered from a nervous fever which had fol- 
lowed upon her return to consciousness. 

The appearance of this witness in the court and her evi- 
dence excited a profound interest, said the papers. She is 
described as a very beautiful woman. Her evidence was 
given in some parts reluctantly, at other times with a rush 
of indignant feeling. When asked by the prisoner if she 
had not once been his mistress, she passionately repelled 
the accusation. She admitted that she had once loved 
him, but that was before she knew the worthlessness of his 
character. She spoke in the highest terms of the mur- 
dered Louise. She denied any knowledge of the fact that 
the brother and sister had adopted names which were not 
their own. She had never heard the name of Morel in 
association with either of them. 

The evidence of the gendarme who arrested the mur- 
derer red-handed was conclusive. The blood of his victim 
and the jewels which he had stolen were found upon him. 
There was little need of deliberation. The verdict was 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 355 

guilty, without extenuating circumstances. The sentence 
was death. 

I can never forget my mother’s face when Gilbert told 
her the doom of Claude Morel. We went together to the 
morning-room where she was sitting at work, her great 
basket of flannel and calico on her hearth-rug in front of 
her chair, her pale, anxious face intent upoTi her stitching. 
In all this time of suspense she had employed herself chiefly 
in visiting the poor and. working for them. She told me 
that it was only by constant occui^ation, useful and me- 
chanical work, that she could steady her nerves and pre- 
vent herself from dwelling incessantly upon the tragedy of 
her life. 

She listened quietly while Gilbert read the verdict and 
the sentence, and then with her head bent and her hands 
clasped she murmured those awful words which she had 
spoken to her husband in her agitation when she flrst read 
of Morel’s crime. 

“ Vengeance is mine; 1 will repay, saith the Lord.” 

How often and how often in the time past she must have 
repeated that solemn text. 

She received a letter from her husband the same evening, 
but it could tell her nothing which the paper had not told 
her already, except that he intended to remain in Paris for 
a few days to see if there were any likelihpod of a reprieve 
or commutation of the sentence. 

Five days afterward my step-father walked into the draw- 
ing-room at nine o’clock in the evening, unannounced 
and unexpected. He had come from Paris by the morning 
mail. 

“ I waited till the eve of the execution, Clara,” he said, 
when my mother had welcomed him — Gilbert and I were 
sitting at chess in a nook near the fire-place, and stood up 
to greet him, but aloof, as if he had been a straiiger. 

‘‘ It is decided then. There will be no reprieve?” said 
my mother. 

“None.” 

“ Then there will be at least one villain less in the 
world,” said J. 

He looked at me. Never to my dying day can I forget 
the agonized reproachfulness of that look. It was a look 
that made rue feel as if I were (he ingrato and the traitor, 
and he only the injured. I saw the picture of my happy 


350 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


childhood — as they say a drowning man sees all his past 
life in the moment before death. I saw myself with my 
arms round that man’s neck and my cheek against his 
breast; saw myself soothed and watched over in hours of 
childish illness; taught and counseled, and amused and. 
trained by that keen intellect; loved, and petted with an 
inexhaustible patience and an unvarying tenderness by 
that grave student, for whom all the world of thought was 
an open book. 

How often, how continually, day after day, had he laid 
aside his dearest occupation to devote himself to the educa- 
tion and the amusement of a child. Yes, he had done all 
this, he had sacrificed his inclinations, he had made him- 
self a slave for my mother’s sake, and to win her he had 
Ijlotted my father’s murder. 

My eyelids fell and my heart beat fast beneath that 
mute reproach, but for me his crime was an unpardonable 
crime. 1 dared not pity him, even in his agony of re- 
morse, for such pity would have been treachery to my dead 
father. 

My mother urged him to take some refreshment after 
his journey, and gave her orders to the butler to that end, 
but he declared that he had dined in London. 

“ You must have had some time in town between the 
arrival of the Paris train and the departure of the 7:50 
from Paddington?” said my mother. 

“ Y^es; I had nearly two hours; time enough to dine 
and to transact a little business in the city.” 

“ Tn the city? But all the offices would be closed at that 
time?” 

“Not the office I wanted.” 

lie was looking very ill, and had grown thinner in the 
few weeks of absence. I saw my mother observing him 
anxiously as he sat in front of the fire, warming his wasted 
hands above tlie blaze. He talked with some show of 
cheerfulness, asked about the preparations for the mar- 
riage and for Christmas. Was it to be a gay Christmas at 
River Lawn? 

“ Gay!” echoed mother; “ how could I think of gayety 
at such a time? My thoughts have been fixed upon one 
subject. .Every effect of my mind has been not to think 
too perpetually of the man who is to die to-morrow.” 

“ Of the man who is to die to-morrow,” he repeated, 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


357 


solemnly. “ Death cancels all wrong-doing — at least the 
law thinks so. The worst that can do to a murderer is to 
kill him.'’'’ 

He rose slowly, and moved about the room in his old 
restless way, and then came over to my mother, and bent 
over her and kissed her. 

“ Don’t sit up for me, Clara,” he said; “ I have letters 
to write, proofs to look over, the accumulations of a month. 
I have sent Ames over to the cottage with my dispatch box; 
1 shall sit there very late most likely.'” 

“Not to-night, Ambrose, surely not to-night. There 
will be plenty of time to-morrow,” remonstrated mother. 

“ No, 1 have left everything to the last. There will be 
no time to-morrow. Good-night, dear love.” 

He nodded to Gilbert and me, a cool, curt nod, and was 
gone before my mother could remonstrate further. 

“ How dreadfully wan and haggard he looks,” she said. 
“ 1 was wrong to let him go to Paris upon such a painful 
business, in his weak health. What would Sir Andrew 
say to me if he knew how his advice had been disre- 
garded?” 

“ Sir Andrew recommended rest, I suppose,” said Gil- 
bert. 

“ He told my husband that it was essential for him to 
take life quietly. ” 

“ Ah, doctors tell us that — but will the heart and brain 
cease from troubling at a physician’s bidding?” 

My mother sighed, and sunk into melancholy silence — 
and our game went on slowly, quietly, in the silent room, 
where there was no sound but the light fall of wood ashes 
on the hearth. 

My mother came to me at seven o’clock next morning, 
and told me that her husband had been at work all night. 
She had watched his lamp from her bedroom window, be- 
ing too agitated to sleep or even to lie down for more than 
half an hour at a time. The lamp had been burning till 
day-break, when she saw it extinguished. 

I too had watched that lamp, wondering what the guilty 
soul was suffering in that long night— whether he wished 
himself in the condemned cell where that vulgar villain 
was waiting the dawn of his last day — whether he would 


358 


WIIOSR WAS THE HAND? 


have welcomed the knife as a short, sharp cure for the 
pangs of a guilty conscience. 

My step-father had ne^er before spent a whole night at 
the cottage, and indeed had seldom occupied himself in his 
library of an evening. This unaccustomed night-watch 
made my mother uneasy, and she asked me to go across 
the road with her, to see if there were anything amiss. 

“ He may have fallen asleep at his desk, she said, “ and 
in a cold room; for I dare say he has not been careful to 
keep the fire burning all night."” 

lie had dismissed his valet when he went over to the cot- 
tage, and was alone there, except for the existence of an 
elderly woman who lived in the back premises, cleaned and 
aired the rooms, and made fires. We went across the road 
together, mother and I, in the bleak winter morning. The 
sky was. red over toward London, but gray and gloomy in 
every other direction. The neglected garden and the cot- 
tage itself looked very dull and dreary in. the chilly atmos- 
phere, the sodden creepers hanging from the walls, the 
plaster blotted with damp. 

“ What a dismal house! To think that Ambrose and 
his son lived in it for ever so many years,” murmured my 
mother. 

She had only to turn the handle of the door to go in, 
there was no bolt or lock to exclude us. I followed her 
into the dark passage, and into the room on the jight of 
the porch, the room which my step-father called his den, 
a room lined with books from floor to ceiling. 

“ Yes,” whispered my mother, “ he has fallen asleep.” 

The room felt close and hot, and faint with the odor of 
lamp-oil. A pair of candles had burned down to the 
sockets, and the ashes were gray in the grate. 

My step-father’s head had fallen upon his folded arms, 
and upon the table in front of him there was a long official 
envelope directed in a large firm hand: 

“ E’or my wife.” 

I read the words across my mother’s shoulder as she bent 
down to speak to her husband, and I guessed what dread- 
ful thing had happened, and what new horror she would 
have to bear. 

“ Come away, mother, come away,” 1 cried; “he is 
dead, I know he is dead!” 

She bent over liim still, and lifted the heavy head, and 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


359 


looked at the ashen countenance. Yes, it was the end. 
Death cancels every wrong. Ambrose Arden’s words of 
the night before came back to me as we stood there in that 
awful silence which his voice could never break again. 

Vain now all hope of keeping the truth from my moth- 
er. That envelope, no doubt, contained the admission of 
his guilt. She would know, and she would suffer from that 
knowledge. 

She burst into tears as she hung over the lifeless clay. 

“ Oh, Daisy!” she sobbed, “ he has gone from us for- 
ever. Our voices can not reach him now. I was never 
half grateful enough for his love or his goodness to me!” 

“ Don’t lament him, mother — he was not worthy,” I 
said; but my tears were streaming too, and I saw the dead 
man as he seemed to me in my childhood, before my fa- 
ther’s death, before he had begun to plot murder. 

We knew before that day was ended that he had died 
from an overdose of chloral. He had had strength of will 
and purpose to throw the empty bottle under the grate, 
where it was found broken among the cinders. Thus it 
was that mother and I did not suspect suicide when we 
found him cold and lifeless at his desk. 

She has not told me the contents of the packet, but 1 
know from her manner that she has nothing more to learn 
about my father’s death. She has been full of sadness 
since her husband’s funeral, in spite of her brave attempt 
to sympathize with Gilbert and me. The wedding has 
been (iela 3 "ed for nearly two months in deference to my 
step-father’s memory and the Uenseanres. The coroner’s 
inquest resulted in a verdict of “ Death by misadventure.” 


CHAPTER XXXHI. 

AMBROSE ARDEN ’S CONFESSION. 

To-morrow morning, before the day is old, Claude 
Morel will expiate his last and worst crime on the scaffold. 
He is now sitting in his condemned cell writing his confes- 
sion, the story of the murder in Denmark Street, the 
hideous history of his crime and of mine, which he has 
sworn that he will leave behind him to-morrow morning to 
be published broadcast to all civilized Europe before to- 
morrow night. 

This room, where 1 sit in the deep of night, in a silence 


360 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 


rarely broken by some belated footfall in the lane, this 
room is my condemned cell. The day that will dawn in a 
few hours will be as surely my day of doom as it will be 
Claude MoreTs. The seiitence of death that was pro- 
nounced upon him was the sentence of death pronounced 
upon me. Ilis fate involved my fate. When 1 made him 
the instrument of my crime I made myself his slave. 

Oh, my beloved, the only idol of my life, it is for you 1 
write the history of my sin! No other eye but yours need 
ever look upon these lines, unless you so will it — and 1 do 
not think you will expose my own confession of weak pas- 
sion and unscrupulous crime to an indifferent public. Let 
the world know my story only as it will be told by my ac- 
complice — a ghastly record, cruelly and brutally told, no 
doubt. These details of my temptation and my fall are 
for you alone; for you who may perhaps execrate my mem- 
ory just a little less if 1 urge my one plea for mercy — I 
loved you with a love that was stronger than honor or man- 
hood; stronger than all the instincts of a life that had been 
blameless while it was passionless; a love that made me a 
villain. 

I first saw Claude Morel at an Italian public-house in 
Greek Street, where I went to distribute some money, col- 
lected from a few of my friends, among the distressed 
Communists who had come to London for a refuge, and 
who were some of them all but starving. Most of the peo- 
ple assembled in that upstairs room over the tavern were 
depressed and dispirited by their necessities and had very 
little to say except to express their thankfulness for the 
aid which I took them; but Morel had a great deal to say 
about the political situation in France. He spoke well, 
and I was interested in his fervid eloquence, and in the 
latent passion which burned in every phrase. I put him 
down as a dangerous man in any country, a firebrand in 
such a city as Paris. 

He heard, en passant, that the friend who had given 
more then half of the sum I had collected was Robert Hat- 
rell. I saw the startling effect of that name upon him, 
and I was hardly surprised when he followed me into the 
street and began to question me about my friend. I was 
surprised, however, at the malignity of his speech, and the 
intensity of malice which betrayed itself in his tone and 
manner. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


361 


He told me the story of his sister’s wrongs; she had been 
fooled and duped by a wealthy Englishman, who coolly re- 
fused any reparation for the wrong he had done — for a 
girl’s blighted name and broken heart. He was not very 
explicit in his charges, but this was the kind of thing which 
he gave me to understand, and he was just as vindictive 
as if he had been certain of his facts. 

I heard the true story of the case from your husband 
afterward, and he gave me his honor that his worst offense 
had been a sentimental flirtation with a yrisette, an inno- 
cent, unsophisticated girl, with whom he had been almost 
seriously in love. His attachment had just stopped short of 
a serious passion; and he had but just escaped the folly 
of a low marriage. 

1 believed my friend’s statement, and thought no more 
of Morel’s malignity, which I did not suppose would ever 
take any overt form, though I considered it my duty to 
warn Robert Hatrell of the existence of this vindictive feel- 
ing, and to let him know that his enemy was in London. 
He laughed at the man’s threats, and the subject was dis- 
missed by us both. 

1 had almost forgotten it when I met Morel in Gower 
Street one afternoon on my way from the Museum to the 
Metropolitan Railway Station. He told me his troubles, 
the difficulty of getting employment, his schemes and in- 
ventions, which sounded chimerical in the last degree, and 
his want of money. He talked again of my friend Ilat- 
rell, but I stopped him peremptorily. 

“ 1 have heard of your sister’s story from my friend’s 
own lips,” I said; “ I know that your version is a tissue of 
lies.” 

He was furious at this. He upbraided me for believing 
a gentleman in preference to a man of the people. It was 
the old story. The well-born seducer could always escape 
the consequences of his wrong-doing; but for once in a way 
the world should see that retribution may follow wrong. 
Robert Hatrell had broken his sister’s heart and had 
grossly insulted him, and he meant to be even with him. 

He asked me for half a sovereign, but I had only a few 
shillings about me; so he gave me a card with a written 
address upon it, begging me to send him a post-office order 
next day. 

I have since discovered that he had api)ealed to your bus- 


362 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


band for money, and had been sternly refused; and no 
doubt that refusal was a more unpardonable offense than 
any sin against his sister. 

It was within a week of this accidental encounter with 
Claude Morel that I received an unexpected visit from my 
father’s old lawyer. He came to Lamford in order with his 
own lips to communicate some very wonderful news. A 
second cousin of my father’s had lately died in Chicago, 
leaving me his residuary legatee, and, with some insignifi- 
cant exceptions, the inheritor of a large fortune acquired in 
trade. I had never even heard of Matthew Arden, who 
had begun life with a small estate in the East Riding, where 
he farmed his own land, and had ended his life as one of 
the richest merchants in Chicago. For me this fortune 
was a fortune dropped from the clouds. 

I was astounded but hardly elated by this news. The 
studious life I was leading was the only life I should ever 
care to lead. Money — except so far as the indulgence of 
my taste as a collector of books — could be of very little use 
to me — and even my taste in books was inexpensive. I did 
not pine for tall copies or rare editions. All I valued in a 
book was its contents. At this time I had not attained to 
the fine instincts of a collector. 

I told my friend that I should make no difference in 
my mode of life, and that I should tell my son nothing of 
this change in our fortunes for some time to come. I 
begged the good old family lawyer to exercise the discretion 
which had always been his distinguishing quality, and to 
take care that no newspaper paragraphs descriptive of 
my unexpected luck had their source in his office. 

When the lawyer left me I sat alone among my books — 
the companions of my life — and thought over the change 
in my fortunes. A stroke of luck which would have made 
most men mad with joy left me cold. What could wealth 
give me? Nothing; for it could not give me you. 

Yes, Clara, it was of you, and you only, that I thought, 
as 1 tried to estimate the value of the wortlilessness of these 
riches that had fallen into my lap. What was their worth 
to me, what could they buy for me? Nothing, nothing, 
nothing ! 

1 was still a young man — I was not ill-looking — and 1 
had some pretensions to intellectual power. Hitherto 
poverty had exercised its restraining influence upon me. 1 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


363 


had lived obscurely, remote from the world. I might 
now — if 1 pleased — make a figure in society, live in a fine 
house and surround myself with fine people. 

I had no more inclination to do this than 1 had to head 
an expedition to the North Pole. Society had no pleasure 
to offer me. Neither house nor garden nor stable had any 
attraction for me. 1 was not a sportsman. I was not a 
yachtsman. I had never felt the faintest interest in a race 
on land or water. I had but one passion, one dream, one 
desire upon earth, or beyond the earth — and that was you. 
My whole being resolved itself into one ardent longing — to 
win you. 

1 loved you from the first day I saw you. Oh, God! how 
vividly I can recall that first day and hour, that casual 
meeting which decided the whole course of my life for good 
or evil. Your face flashes out of the dimness beyond the 
lamp-light — a vision of gladness and beauty — as it shone 
upon me that clear October morning, when you stood before 
me leaning against your husband^s arm, newly returned 
from your honey-moon, a two-months’ bride. 

You remember our first meeting, Clara; how I looked 
in through the open gate and saw you standing deep in 
conversation with your husband and his architect, who was 
holding an open plan for you both to look at. 1 had made 
Mr. HatrelPs acquaintance a few days before, when he 
came down to Lamford alone, and we happened to travel 
in the same railway carriage. 

He introduced himself tome as my future neighbor, and 
insisted upon giving me a lift in his fly from the station, 
though I told him it was my habit to walk home. 

“ I want you to tell me all about the neighborhood,” he 
said. 

This had bi ken the ice, and we exchanged friendly 
greetings through the open gate. He called me into the 
garden and introduced me to his wife. 

1 remember your courteous greeting — so courteous yet so 
careless. How could you dream that I was to be so potent 
a factor in your sum of life? How could you guess that 
the lovely face which you turned toward me, so unconscious 
of its power to infiuence me, was to change the whole cur- 
rent of my existence— to make me first your passionate 
lover, and next your husband’s murderer? 

Yes, Clara, his murderer! From that hour 1 was fore- 


:]G4 WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 

doomed to evil for your sake. I was fated to blight your 
happiness, and to miss being happy, even though I gained 
the wages of my crime. 

What did I think of you that day? Only that you were 
the most enchanting woman I had ever seen, and that 
Robert Hatrell was a man for all other men to envy. My 
thoughts went no further than that on the first day. I 
thought of your loveliness as I should have thought of some 
rare flower, the white chalice of the Victoria regia floating 
in the faint tropical haze of a still water-pool, the paJe 
purple or the vivid gold of some fairy-like orchid — some- 
thing delicately beautiful that did not come within the 
scope of my life. I had no more definite thought of you 
than that; yet afterward 1 knew thatl had loved you from 
the first. The change was in myself, not in my thoughts. 
A slow consuming fever was kindled in me that day which 
has never ceased to burn. Little by little, by infinitesimal 
stages, it has burned up heart and brain. 

Your husband liked me, and you were always kind. For 
the first years of our acquaintance we met but rarely, and 
it was not until you were established at River Lawn that I 
came to be intimately acquainted with you both, and grad- 
ually to be almost one of the family. Daisy was the 
link which united us. 1 had the good fortune to win the 
child’s love, and this assured me of the mother’s friend- 
ship. You loved books, while your husband cared little 
for reading or any intellectual pursuit, being, above all, a 
man of action. I was able thus to supply something want- 
ing in your life, and to fill a place which he ought to have 
been able to fill. I was the adviser of your studies, and 
the sharer of your ideas. 1 felt sometimes as if I were the 
husband of your intellect as he was the husband of your 
heart. 

Had I ever seen any wavering in your fidelity to him, 
any weariness of the tie that bound you to him, I do not 
believe that 1 should have dared to try to turn it to my 
own advantage. I could not have degraded you by one 
unworthy prayer. I could not couple dishonor with your 
image. 

There were times when our calm friendship, our mutual 
love for your child, which kept us in touch with each 
other, seemed to me almost enough for my happiness. 1 
felt as if 1 could have gone on contentedly thus to old age. 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


305 


making a quiet third in your life — now with your husband, 
now with your daughter, always subordinate; the shadow 
beside your sunshine. And then while I was cheating my- 
self with these calm thoughts a wave of passion would 
sweep over my being; a demon of jealousy would rend and 
tear me; and 1 could not endure to be with you in the 
serene atmosphere of domestic love. Your husband’s every 
look and every tone tortured me. 

Y^ou have both of you reproached me sometimes for keep- 
ing aloof, for burying myself among my books, and shun- 
ning the hospitalities of Eiver Lawn. If you could have 
seen me in those supposed studious intervals, you would 
have seen a man possessed of devils, given over to perdition. 

Imagine these years of alternate storm and calm; im- 
agine a mind and heart burned up by one devouring pas- 
sion, worn out with the monotony of despair, and then 
think what my thoughts must have been as I sat in my 
solitude and brooded over the worthlessness of my newly 
acquired wealth. 

Had you been free, fortune would have meant every- 
thing for me. Had you been free — the widow of a rich 
man — it would have been a hard thing to approach you as a 
pauper. My pride would have revolted against owing all 
to you, fortune as well as happiness. But now — now that 
I was rich — your equal at least in fortune, my motives 
could not inspire doubt even in the meanest mind. Were 
I to wed you no malicious worldling could ever say of me, 
“ He gained all that by a lucky marriage.” 

Were you but free! 

I began to meditate upon the uncertainty of life, and to 
picture to myself the accidents and sudden unforeseen dis- 
eases by which men as young and vigorous as Eobert Hat- 
rell are sometimes taken away. 1 thought of railway 
accidents, and imagination conjured up th^e picture of a 
calamity in all its vivid detail — an engine off the line — a 
coach or two wrecked — and Eobert Hatred lying dead 
upon the side of the embankment. I pictured the sudden 
horror of his home-coming upon the shrouded bier. Your 
agony, your tears, I passed over those lightly, thinking of 
how it would be my lot to console you, to win you back to 
happiness and a new love. I never doubted your love for 
him; I knew that your heart was entirely his; but I 


366 


WHOSE WAS thf: hand? 


thought I had an influence over your mind which would 
speedily ripen into love, he being removed. 

I understood you so little, you see, Clara. I had not 
fathomed the mystery of your heart. He has been dead 
nine years, and you love him still. You have never loved 
me. 

I thought of the river, saw him rowing toward the sun- 
set, with his strong, slow stroke, in such a scene as our 
English landscape-painters love; the village church beyond 
the low line of rushes; the clustering willows, pale in the 
evening mists; the glory of the sunset beliind church-tower 
and tall elms. 

1 thought that even on that placid river there were pos- 
sibilities of danger — a boat of silly, chattering Cocknies up- 
set, a strong man swimming to their rescue, and losing his 
life in the struggle to save those unknown lives. Such 
•things have been. 

I thought of fevers which seize men suddenly in the full 
vigor of youth. 1 thought of insidious diseases which creep 
upon a man unsuspected, and sap the citadel before he 
knows that Death in one of his numerous disguises is at 
the door. 

Last of all, I thought of Claude Morel and his threats 
of vengeance. 

1 laughed at the notion. Harmless thunder, no doubt. 
It is common enough for angry men to threaten, yet 
threatened men live. 

There was something in my recollection of Claude Morel 
which made me dwell upon his image in that long reverie, 
as the lovely light of the June afternoon slowly faded, and 
the gold of the western sky shone into my room, dazzling 
my dreaming eyes. I recall the color of the sunset, the 
feeling of the air, as it gradually cooled into evening. I 
recall every half-unconscious impression of hours which 
marked the crisis of my life, and saw me change from an 
honest man to a villain. 

There were in Claude MoreTs tone and manner certain 
indications of a malignity which I h^d never seen in any 
other man. There was a concentration of purpose, a reso- 
lute intention to injure, which must ultimately take some 
definite form, I told myself; unless cowardice should inter- 
vene. And I did not think Morel a coward. The man 


WHOSE IVAS THE HAND ? 


367 


had so little to lose. His fortunes were desperate enough 
to make him daring. 

What if the opportunity arose, and he were to murder 
the man he hated — the man who had refused to help him 
in his distress. 1 implicitly believed Robert Hatreli^s ac- 
count of his love affair; and I did not give Morel credit for 
caring very much about his sister's reputation. He had 
tried to make money out of the Englishman's caprice, and 
he had failed ignominiously. Hence, and hence only, 
that rancorous hatred. He was of the temper which in 
the hour of misfortune would turn like a tiger against the 
fortunate — the temper of men who surge up out of the 
paving-stones and gutters of every great city in the time of 
revolution, and who do evil for evil's sake. Upon the 
conscience of such a man as that murder would sit lightly. 

What if he really meant murder? I pictured that 
sinister figure lurking in the rustic lanes, lying hidden in a 
dry flowery ditch, under the spreading hedge-row, ready 
with pistol or knife when his enemy passed by. 

Opportunity! Why, if he meant murder, it would be 
easy enough for him to create his opportunity. But when 
the thing was done, when that gnawing rage had satiated 
itself, there would be nothing gained but the gratification 
of his anger, and there would be the hazard of the gallows. 

The murderer's craft may minimize that risk. The old 
saw that murder will out, has proved a lying proverb of 
late years. The art of murder has improved with the 
march of civilization, and the modern murderer is more 
than a match for the modern policeman. 

I recalled a murder which had interested me curiously 
years before, when 1 read the account of it in a London 
newspaper, 1 being then remote from London, in the still- 
ness of the Welsh hills. 

It happened in the days when trade-imion was called con- 
spiracy, and when the law of the land bore heavily upon 
workmen who banded themselves together against their 
employer. A certain set of men had conspired; there had 
been outrages and violence in a certain northern city, an 
attempt at arson. The ringleaders were denounced by 
one of themselves, were tried, found guilty, and sentenced 
to transportation for life. The man who betrayed them 
dared not remain in his native city. There he knew him- 


368 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


self to be a marked man, but he thought he would be safe 
in London, under an assumed name. 

He came to London, got employment readily, for he was 
a clever workman, and funded the price of his treachery as 
a nest-egg for his old age. 

Going homeward one day, at his dinner hour, he passed 
along a quiet street in Soho which he was in the habit of 
passing daily. Midway this street is intersected by a nar- 
row alley. As the man came in front of the opening he 
was shot dead by some one standing in the alley, waiting 
for him to pass. No one ever knew what hand fired the 
shot. It was in broad daylight, in the heart of a busy dis- 
trict, but the murderer disappeared as easily as if he had 
been spirit and not flesh. I tell you of this long-forgotten 
crime, Clara, because it was the nucleus of evil thoughts 
which slowly took the form of murder. 

My wicked scheme did not shape itself all at once. For 
many days and nights I was haunted by the image of 
Claude Morel, haunted by the tones of his voice, the lurid 
light in his eyes when he talked of his enemy. Again and 
again I found myself mentally measuring the force of that 
hatred which had expressed itself in biting tones and malev- 
olent looks. Did it amount to so much, or so much, or 
so much? Was it really strong enough to plan and accom- 
plish an assassination, in broad daylight, in the streets of 
London, like the murder of the workman who betrayed his 
comrades? 

All this time my life went on upon the old lines — the 
calm monotony of rustic surroundings, the unvarying gra- 
ciousness of your friendship. Your child sat beside me at 
her books, under the willow, or hung upon my shoulder in 
her exuberance of love; and there was no instinct in her 
childish mind to warn her that the man she loved and 
trusted had given himself over to the powers of hell. 

I am not sufiiciently orthodox to believe in a personal 
devil any more than I believe in a personal God, yet in 
those days I could not divest myself of the feeling that 
wicked influences outside my own being had got hold of 
me — that the hideous hopes and schemes that I was for- 
ever revolving in my mind were prompted by a power of 
iniquity greater than my own. 

While the wicked web was slowly spreading, the man 
who was the incarnation of my own sinful longing ap- 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


3G0 


peared upon the scene. He had written me two or three 
begging letters after that chance meeting in Gower Street, 
and I had sent him small sums of money, such amounts as 
a man of my supposed means might send to such an appli- 
cant. These concessions had made him bolder, and he 
came to my house in the dusk of a summer evening, hav- 
ing walked all the way from Staines. He had just the rail- 
way fare to Staines, he told me, and no more. I took him 
in and fed him, and let him sit at my table and vapor 
about his inchoate inventions, all burked for the want of 
capital. I let him talk of your husband, and I answered 
all his questions about the man he hated. I told him of 
Robert HatrelTs happy and peaceful life, his prosperity, 
his last fancy for sinking four thousand pounds in the pur- 
chase of a few acres of land to increase his pleasure-grounds. 

“ In your native South I take it you would be able to 
buy an olive wood and a vineyard with that money I 
said. 

He nodded yes, and went on eating and drinking in a 
meditative silence. 

‘‘Now were any man as savage a foe to Robert Hatred 
as you pretend to be,^^ I said, after a long pause, “ he 
would have a good chance of taking his revenge and mak- 
ing his fortune some time next week.^^ 

He looked at me wonderingly, and I explained that Hat- 
red would have to pay for the land in Bank of England 
notes. It was an old-fashioned etiquette with solicitors to 
expect to be paid in bank-notes, even when a man^s check 
was as good as the bank paper. He would go up to Lon- 
don on an appointed day, cash his check at his bank, and 
then carry the money to the solicitor’s- office. I told him 
casually the name and address of the bank, and the name 
and address of the solicitor; and I saw him sitting there 
before me, with his eyes kindling like two burning coals, 
and his under-lip trembling curiously as his halting breath 
came and went. 

“ Hatred and his money will be safe enough,” he mut- 
tered at last. “A man isn’t robbed and murdered in 
broad daylight in such a city as London.” 

“ There you show your foreign ignorance of our manners 
and customs,” I said; and then I gave him the brief his- 
tory of several metropolitan assassinations which had oc- 
curred within my memory. 


370 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


He became very serious and silent, sitting before^ his 
empty plate, with his chin drooping on his chest, his inky 
brows bent in a meditative frown. Suddenly, after an in- 
terval which seemed long, he lifted his head and turned 
and looked at me, with a devilish cunning in his eyes. 

“You hate Robert Hatrell as much as 1 do,^’ he said. 
“ You are in love with his wife, I dare say."” 

“ Nonsense. I am only trying to prove to you that all 
your talk about hatred and revenge is so much melo- 
dramatic bluster, and that you haven^t the slightest inten- 
tion of injuring my friend.” 

“ Your friend, your friend,” he repeated, mockingly. 

And then, after another interval of silence, during which 
he walked over to the window and stood looking across the 
placid summer twilight, in the direction of River Lawn, 
he came over to me and stood in front of me, looking at 
me fixedly, and emphasizing every sentence with a sharp 
blow of his knuckles upon the table. 

“You want that man killed, so do 1 — cela c^est convenu, 
I would kill him for sixpence — kill him for the mere pleas- 
ure of making him understand that he was a fool to trifie 
with Claude Morelos sister, and a greater fool to insult 
Claude Morel. I take too lofty a view of the situation 
perhaps. That is in my blood. We Provencals do not 
easily pardon an injury or an insult. I would kill him for 
sixpence; but I would much rather kill him for four thou- 
sand pounds. You say the purchase is to be completed 
next week?” 

I nodded yes. My dry lips refused to speak. 

“ Let me know the day and hour. Let me know, if you 
can, the route he is likely to take from Pall Mall to Lin- 
coln’s Inn Fields. Give me twenty pounds to be ready for 
what 1 have to do, and so that 1 may have a few pounds 
about me to get me out of England in case of failure. Do 
this, and you may He down to-night secure in the thought 
that Robert HatrelPs days are numbered, and that his wife 
will soon be his widow. ” 

I gave him twenty pounds without a word. 

“ ITl think about the other part of the business,” I told 
him. 

“ Remember, if 1 am to act you will have to be prompt 
and decisive,” he said. “ I can’t stir a step without exact 
details. I shall shift my lodgings to-morrow, so as to be 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ^71 

near the scene of action. My present quarters at Camden 
Town are far too far afield.^’ 

His devilish coolness was too much for me. I told him 
I had been talking at random. I meant nothing except to 
test him. He had proved himself a greater villain than I 
had thought possible, and I never wanted to see his face 
again. 

“You will think better of that/’ ho said. “I’ll tele- 
graph my address to-morrow morning, and 1 shall wait for 
your instructions.” 

Not till the last moment — not till I crossed the threshold 
of the post-office at Keadiug — an hour after your husband 
left for London on that fatal day — did I make up my mind 
that I was going to do this hideous thing. Again and again 
and again with agonizing iteration I had argued the ques- 
tion. 1 had told myself that this horror could not be, that 
I, Ambrose Arden, was not the stuff of which murderers 
are made — and again and again and yet again my thoughts 
had gone back to the pit of hell, and 1 had pictured you 
free to return my love, and I had thought that such love 
must finally win its reward, that in all intense passion 
there is a force and a magnetism which can compel 
responsive passion, as fire will spread from one burning 
fabric to another that was dark and cold till the flame 
touched it. 

When your husband left the gate that morning I knew 
that I must act at once, or never. 1 walked to the station, 
caught the slow train that left half an hour after the ex- 
press by which he traveled by, and went to Reading, where 
the wording of my telegram was not likely to arouse official 
curiosity. I had only one fact to communicate, the hour 
of HatrelTs appointment with Florestan’s solicitor. Morel 
knew the locality of the bank, and it would be for him to 
watch and find out the route taken from Oockspur Street 
to Lincoln’s Inn. 

Can you think what my feelings were that night when 
you came over to this house at ten o’clock to tell me that 
your husband had not returned? 

1 knew then that one of the most hellish schemes ever 
hatched had been carried out to the bitter end, and that 
the murder had been done. Did Judas feel as I did, 1 
wonder, before he went and hanged himself? I did not 
give myself up to that blind despair of remorse which 


372 WHOSE WAS THE HAND? 

moved him who betrayed his Master. I was baser, harder, 
viler than Judas — for I stood that night with your hands 
clasped in mine, pretending to comfort you, repeating 
lying assurances that all would be well, while my heart 
beat madly with the thought that you were free, and that 
it would be my lifers labor to win your love. 

And through those days of doubt and horror I acted my 
part, and hypocrisy came easy to me. Anything was easy, 
so long as 1 was with you, consoling, advising, sustaining, 
you leaning upon me in your innocent unconsciousness of 
the deep flood of passion below the steadfast quietude of 
friendship which I had schooled myself to maintain. 

Throughout those days I was haunted by the fear that 
the murderer would bo caught, tried and condemned, and 
that he would reveal my part in his crime. 1 feared that 
which has now come to pass, after a respite of nearly nine 
years. 

Then came the darkest period of all my hateful life, the 
period of your illness, when your life hung in the balance, 
when every day that dawned might be your last on earth. 
1 lived through that time, a time of fear and trembling 
which I shuddered even to remember years afterward. 

And then, and then came my great reward, the reward 
of treachery and bloodshed, base betrayal of a noble friend, 
a long tissue of lies and hypocrisies — then, after years of 
patience in which I had shrunk with an unconquerable 
hesitancy from putting my fate to the touch, I had the 
price of my sin. Your love, no! That love for which I 
had played my Judas part was no nearer my winning after 
seven years’ apprenticeship than it was while my victim 
lived. You gave me gratitude — gratitude to me who had 
blighted your happy life! You rewarded me for the stead- 
fastness of a friendship which in somewise linked my image 
with that of your murdered husband. Oh, how you will 
abhor my memory, when you look back upon your noble 
sacrifice, your generous payment of a fancied debt! How 
you will hate yourself for having been cheated into giving 
yourself to the man who plotted your husband’s death, who 
was to all intents and purposes his murderer! 

Well, it is all over now. I grasped the Dead Sea fruit, 
and tasted the bitterness of its ashen core. I knew that 
you did not love me — and I was more miserable as youi 
husband than when I waited at your gate as a suitor. 


WHOSE WAS -THE HAND? 


373 


There were glimpses of Paradise then — gleams of hope 
shining on my crime-darkened spirit — but afterward when 
I had constrained you to be mine — when 1 had won all that 
Fate could give me, I knew that youi\heart was with the 
dead. 

“ Kaught’s bad, all’s spent, 

When our desire is got without content.” 

That was the motto of my life. 

Then came a new horror — a haunting fear of the dead, 
which I take to have been rather physical than mental. 
Could I, disciple of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, I who 
had graduated in the school of exact science, and reduced 
every thought and feeling to its logical sequence, admit- 
ting nothing which my mind could not conceive — I to be 
haunted and paralyzed by the dread of a shadow — I to 
tremble and turn cold on entering your dead husband^s 
study lest 1 should see a pale image of the dead seated 
where the living man used to sit — I to walk those familiar 
gardens with an ever-present dread of a well-known foot- 
step sounding behind me, or, when no imaginary sound 
pursued me, with an absolute certainty that I was being 
followed by the noiseless movements of a phantom? I to 
become the slave of such fears— 1 who believe in nothing 
beyond the limitations of our understanding — who have 
bounded all my speculations to the real and the finite? 

I knew from the first that these horrors had their birth 
in shattered nerves and broken health. 1 knew that I 
was as much a sutlerer from jjhysical causes as the victim 
of alcoholic poisoning who sees devils and vermin about his 
bed. Yet the thing was as real to me as if I had been the 
firmest believer in supernatural influences; and I suffered 
as much from these false appearances and imaginary 
sounds as the believer could have suffered. That is one 
form which retribution has taken; the other form has 
been my ever-present sense of disappointment in not hav- 
ing won your heart. Tortured thus, life has been only a 
synonym for suffering, and 1 can look forward coldly and 
calmly to to-morrow, when I shall have ceased to live. 

How can I plead to you at the close of this full and de- 
liberate confession? How dare I hope that you can have 
any feeling except loathing for the writer of these lines? 
For myself, therefore, I will ask nothing. 1 ask only that 
you will be kind to my son, who, if Morel carries out his 


^ 74 : WHOSt) WAS TttK HAND P 

threat, must bear henceforward the burden of a name 
blurred by his father’s infamy. lie has a fine character, 
and will reward your kindness. His mother was one of 
the best and purest of women; think of him as inheriting 
her virtues and not my dark and evil spirit. It is not in 
his nature either to live as I have lived, or to sin as I have 
sinned. 

Yes, you will be good to my son, I know, Clara. You 
will forget that there is one drop of my Judas blood in his 
veins. You may know now, in this day of confessions, 
why he left us — why he broke the tie between him and 
Daisy, and shook the dust of his father’s dwelling off his 
feet. He had found me out, Clara. Accident had put 
him in the way of hearing his father’s guilt pronounced by 
the lips of the wretch who executed the crime which his fa- 
ther had only meditated in evil dreams. 

Claude Morel hunted me out in our house in London, 
and forced his way to my study in order to ask me for 
money. It was not his first attempt upon my purse. I 
had been pestered by letters from him, sometimes at long 
intervals, sometimes in rapid succession; but I had an- 
swered none of those letters; and now when he dared to 
force an entrance in my house I was rigid in my refusal of 
money. 1 knew what the word chantage means for a 
Frenchman of his temper; and that if I once opened my 
purse to him I should be his slave forever. I was no cow- 
ard in my relations with that scoundrel, although he threat- 
ened me with the one thing which I had to fear— he threat- 
ened to fell you the story of his crime, and how he took 
the first hint of it from my lips. He had kept the tele- 
gram sent from Reading on the morning of the murder — 
the telegram giving the hour of your husband’s appoint- 
ment; and he swore that if I denied him substantial help 
he would tell his story to you, and lay that telegram be- 
fore you. 

I bade him do his worst, strong in the assurance that he 
would do nothing to incriminate himself, and that he could 
not touch upon the subject of Robert Hatrell’s death with- 
out jeopardizing his own safety. Least of all did I believe 
that he would reveal himself to you as your husband’s 
murderer. No; I felt that I had nothing to fear beyond 
personal annoyance from the existence of Claude Morel; 
yet the memories which the man pressed upon me were so 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


375 


hideous, his presence was so intolerable that I would have 
given half my fortune to be rid of him forever. It was as 
if my crime had taken a living shape and were dogging my 
steps. Most of all did I loathe his presence when he came 
upon me in my quiet study — in the room where his crime 
and mine had first shaped itself in my disordered mind. 

He had resolved to weary me out, 1 believe, and to that 
end he had taken a lodging at Henley. He appeared upon 
my pathway at all hours, and in the most unexpected places, 
but 1 was rock. 

We had several interviews before the one which was 
fatal to my son^s peace of mind, and which parted father 
and son forever. 

On that particular morning Morel overtook me in the 
lane near my cottage, and urged his demands with a sav- 
age persistence, rendered desperate, 1 suppose, by the dis- 
appointment of hopes which he had entertained from the 
hour he discovered that I was a rich man. 

You say that I knew you in London some years ago,’^ 
1 said, “ and that we had confidential conversations to- 
gether in this place, and that we two together plotted the 
murder of my best friend? You admit that you are a mur- 
derer, and you ask me to believe that I am one. I choose 
to deny all your assertions — I choose to say that I never 
saw your face till you forced your way into my London 
home. If you persist in the form of persecution which you 
have been carrying on for the last six weeks it will be my 
duty to hand you over to the police, and it will be their 
duty to discover whether you are a lunatic at large, or 
whether you are really the man you pretend to be, and the 
murderer of Mr. Hatrell. In the latter case there must be 
people who can identify you. Some of those witnesses at 
the inquest who saw you go in and out of the house in Den- 
mark Street may still be within reach of a subpoena. If 
you annoy me any further in my own house or out-of-doors 
it will be needful for me to take this step, and you may be 
sure I shall take it.'’ ^ 

I had never been cooler than when 1 gave him this an- 
swer. I had weighed and measured the situation, and I 
did not believe he had power to harm me, be his malignity 
what it might. My crime might be even darker than his, 
but he could not touch my guilt with his little finger with- 
out his whole body being drawn into the meshes of the 


376 


WHOSE WAS THE HAND ? 


law. I knew that, and I could afford to laugh at his fury. 
To give him money, were it so much as a single sovereign, 
would be in somewise to acknowledge his claim to make a 
link between us. There should be no such link. And 
over and above this motive 1 abhorred the man, and his 
necessities had no power to touch my pity. 

He could do me no harm, 1 thought; nor could he, but 
for the accident of my son^s crossing the top of the lane 
while this man was with me, and having his attention at- 
tracted by the strangeness of the man’s gestures as he 
talked to me. The angry flourish of his arm as he poured 
his rancor into my ear suggested a threat of personal vio- 
lence, my son followed us, in order to protect his father 
should there be need of his interference; at once within 
earshot he stayed his footsteps and listened to the end of a 
savage recapitulation of all the details of those vague sug- 
gestions which led to the scheme of the murder, and of the 
sending of the telegram that furnished the information 
which rendered the ci ime possible. 

He, my son, heard the history of my sin, heard and be- 
lieved. I stopped at the end of the lane, and looked 
round. Cyril stood a few paces from me, deathly pale, 
looking at me in terrible silence. Claude Morel turned 
and saw him stand there, almost at the same moment, and 
slunk aside in abject fear. 

“ How dare yon insult my father with your lunatic rav- 
ings !’' cried Cyril, lifting his stick threateningly, “ be off 
with you, fellow!’^ 

He pointed Londonward with his stick, and Morel crept 
slowly along the dusty road, leaving me face to face with 
my son. 

“You donT believe — I began; but his face told me 
that he did believe Claude Morel’s story, and that nothing 
I could say would undo the mischief that scoundrel’s 
tongue had done. The story of the telegram had con- 
demned me in my son’s eyes; and perhaps, too, my guilt 
was written upon my brow, had been written there from 
the beginning in characters that deepened with the passage 
of time. Oh, God, how often, sitting among you all, 
within the sound of Daisy’s innocent laughter, 1 have 
found the burden of my guilt so heavy, so intolerable, that 
I have been tempted to cry my secret aloud and make an 
end of my long agony. And now I saw all the horror of it 


WHOSE WAS THE HAHD 


‘677 


reflected in my son^s agonized face as he told me that he 
could never be Daisy^s husband, that the murderer’s son 
must not marry the victim’s daughter. 

“ Oh, how she would hate me,” he cried, “ if years 
after our marriage she found -she had been entrapped into 
such a loathsome union!” 

He told me that he should leave England at once, and 
forever. He was not without pity for me, although my 
crime and the passion that prompted it lay beyond the 
region of his thoughts. To him such a character as mine 
was unthinkable. 

He who could renounce love when honor urged him 
could not understand the love that makes light of honor, 
truth, friendship, all things for love’s sake. His happier 
nature has never sounded that dark depth. 

And so we parted. 1 wanted him at least to share my 
fortune. There was no taint at the source of this. If he 
were to begin a new life, 1 urged that he might as well 
begin it with independence and comfort; but he told me 
he could take nothing from me; and he was resolute in his 
refusal. 

“ I am young enough to make my own way in the 
world,” he told rue; “ thews and sinews must have their 
value somewhere.” 

And so we parted, just touched ice-cold hands, and part- 
ed forever. 


THE END. 


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181 Two Years Before the Mast. By B. H, Bana, Jr. 


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182 Uarda. By Georg Ebers. 

183 Vanity Fair. By W. M. Thackeray. 

184 Vendetta, The. By Balzac. 

185 Vicar of Wakefield. By Oliver Goldsmith. 

186 Vivian Grey. By Lord Beaconsfield. 

187 Vixen. By Miss M. E. Braddon. 

188 Waverley. By Sir Walter Scott. 

189 We Two. By Edna Lyall. 

190 Wee Wifie. By Eosa N. Carey. 

191 What’s Mine’s Mine. By George Macdonald. 

192 Whittier’s Poems. By J. G. Whittier. 

193 Widow Bedott Papers. Mrs. Whitcher. 

194 Willy Eeilly. By William Carleton. 

195 Woman’s Face, A. By Mrs. Alexander. 

196 Woman in White, The. By Wilkie Collins. 

197 Woman’s Love Story, A. By Bertha M. Clay. 

198 Wooing O’t. By Mrs. Alexander. 

199 Zanoni. By Lord Lytton. 

200 Zenobia. By Wm. Ware. 


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The works have been especially selected from the most noted authors 
of juvenile literature and in every case are works that can be brought into 
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which often follow the reading of low-priced li'erature. 


Abbott’s Stories for Children. By Jacob Abbott. 
Adventures among the Indians. 

Adventures, Forest and Frontier. 

Adventures of Famous Travellers. 

Adventures of Famous Sailors. 

Adventures of Bob Boy, The. By James Grant. 

Afloat in the Forest. By Capt. Mayne Beid. 

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. By Lewits Carroll 
Audubon the Naturalist. By Mrs, Horace St. John. 
Aunt Diana. By Bosa Nouchette Carey. 

Barbara’s Triumph.. By Mary A. Denison. 

Boy Conqueror. 

Boy Crusoes ; or, The Young Islanders. 

Boys’ and Girls’ Story Book. 

Boy Hunters. By Capt. Mayne Beid. 

Boys in the Forecastle, The. By Geo. H. Coomer. 
Boys of the Bible. 

Boy Slaves. By Capt. Mayne Beid. 

Boy Tar. By Capt. Mayne Beid. 

Bruin. By Capt. Mayne Beid. 

Bush Boys. By Capt. .Mayne Beid. 

Cast Up by the Sea. By Sir Samuel Baker. 


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Cliff Climbers. By Capt. Mayne Beid. 

Daniel Boone, Life of. 

Children’s Stories. 

Deep Down. By Ballantyne. 

Desert Home. By Capt. Mayne Reid. 

Dick Cheveley. By W. H. G. Kingston. 

Dick Rodney. By J. Grant. 

Eastern Fairy Legends, Current in Sbuthern India. 
Edgeworth’s Parents’ Assistant. 

Edgeworth’s Moral Tales. 

Edgeworth’s Popular Tales. 

Edgeworth’s Classic Tales. 

Eight Years' 'Wandering in Ceylon. By Sir S. Baker. 
Eric Dane. By M. "White, Jr. 

Erling the Bold. By R. M. Ballantyne. 

Esther. By Rosa N. Carey. 

Famous Boys. 

Famous Men. 

Fire Brigade, The. By R. M. Ballantyne. 

Flag of Distress. By Capt. Mayne Reid. 

Flat Iron for a Farthing, A By Mrs. Ewing. 

Forest Exiles. By Capt. Mayne Reid. 

Fort Pillow to the End. By William M. Thayer. 

Fort Sumter to Roanoke Island. By M^m. M. Thayer. 
Frank Wildman’s Adventures on Land and Water. By 
Frederick Gerstaecker. 

Gascoyne. By R. M. Ballantyne. 

German Fairy Tales. Translated by Chas. A. Dana. 
Gilbert the Trapper. By Capt. C. M. Ashley. 

Giraffe Hunters. By Capt. Mayne Reid. 

Golden Magnet, The. By G. M. Fenn. 

Grade Goodwin. A Story for Girls. 

Grandfather’s Chair. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

Grey Hawk. By James Macaulay. 

Harlie’s Letters. By Jacob Abbott. 

HaufTs Fairy Tales. 


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In Southern Seas. By Frank H. Converse. 

In the Wilds of New Mexico. By G. M. Fenn. 
Jackanapes and Other Tales. By Mrs. Ewing. 

Jack Wheeler. By Capt. David South wick. 

Land of Mystery. By E. H. Jayne. 

Luke Bennet’s Hide Out. By Capt. C. B. Ashley. 
Magician’s Show-box, The, and Other Stories. 

Mark Seaworth. H W. H. G. Kingston. 

Merle’s Crusade. By Bosa N. Carey. 

Midshipman, The. By W. H. G. Kingston. 

Mountain Cave, The. By Geo. H. Coomer. 

Murfreesboro to Fort Pillow. By William M. Thayer. 
Mystery of a Diamond, The. By Franl^; H. Converse. 
Nature’s Young Nobleman. By Brooks McCormick. 
Number 91. By Arthur Lee Putnam. 

Ocean Waifs. By Capt. Mayne Reid. 

Odd People. By Capt. Mayne Reid. 

Old Merry’s Travels on the Continent. 

On the Trail of Geronimo. By R. H. Jayne. 

Oriental Fairy Tales. 

Our Young Soldiers. By Lieut. W. R. Hamilton. 

Paul Blake. Adventures of a Boy in the Island of Cor- 
sica, etc. 

Perils of the Jungle. By Lieut. R. H. Jayne. 

Peter the Whaler. By W. H. G. Kingston. 

Pirate Island. By Harry Collingwood. 

Plant Hunters. By Capt. Mayne Reid. 

Popular Natural History. 

Ran Away to Sea. By Capt. Mayne Reid. 

Red Eric, The. By R. M. Ballantyne. 

Ride and Hound in Ceylon, The. By Sir Samuel Baker. 
Roanoke Island to Murfreesboro. By Wm. M. Thayer. 
Robin Hood and His Merry Forresters. 

Round the World. By W. H. G. Kingston. 

Salt Water. By W. H. G. Kingston. 

Sandford and Merton. 


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School Life ; or, Three Tears at Wolverton. 

Smuggler’s Cave, The. By Annie Ashmore. 

Spanish Fairy Tales. 

Stories about Animals. By Caph Mayno Beid. 

Stories from American History. 

Through the Looking Glass. By Lewis Carroll. 

Tiger Prince, The. By William Dalton. 

Tom Tracy. By Arthur Lee Putnam. 

Twice Told Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

Voyage to the Gold Coast, A. By Frank H. Converse. 
War Tiger, The. By William Dalton. 

White Elephant, The. By William’ Dalton. 

White Mustang, The. By B. H. Jayne. 

Wild Sports in the Far West. By Frederick Gerstaecker. 
Wolf Boy in China, The. By William Dalton. 

Wonders of the Great Deep. By P. H. Gosse. 

Young Acrobat. By Horatio Alger. 

Young Adventurer. 

Young Foresters, The, and Other Tales. 

Young Folks’ Book of Birds. 

•Young Folks’ Book of Book. 

Young Folks’ History of France. By C. M. Yonge. 

Young Folks’ History of Germany. By C. M. Yonge. 
Young Folks’ History of Greece. 

Young Folks’ History of Borne. 

Young Voyagers. By Capt. Mayne Beid. 

Young Yagers. By Capt. Mayne Beid. 

Young Folks’ Historical Tales. By William and Bobert 
Chambers. 

Young Folks’ Tales of Adventures. By William and Bob- 
ert Chambers. 

Young Folks’ Popular Tales. By Wilham and Bobert 
Chambers. 

Young Folks’ Scottish Tales. By William and Bobert 
Chambers. 

Young Folks’ Natural History. 


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4S. Was Ever Woman in this TTumor "Wooei). By Chas. Gibbon 30 

49. The Mynns Mystery. By George Manville Fenn 30 

50. llEDRi. By Helen Mathers 30 

51. The Bondman. By Hall Caine 30 

52. A Girl op the People. By L. T. Meade 30 

53. Twenty Novelettes, by 'Twenty Prominent Novelists 30 

54. A Family Without a Name, By Jules Verne 30 

55. A Sydney Sovereign. By Tasma 30 

56. A March in the Ranks. By Jessie Fothergill 30 

57. Our Erring Brother. By F. W. Robinson 30 

58. Misadventure, By W. E. Norris 30 

59. Plain Tales prom the Hills. By Rudyard Kipling 50 

60. Dinna Forget. By John Stranee Winter 30 

61. Cosette. By Katharine Maequoid 30 

62. Master op His Fate. By J. Maclaren C^obban.. 30 

63. A Very Strange Family. By F. W. Robinson 30 

64. The Kilburns. By Annie Thomas. 30 

65. The Firm dp Girdlestone. By A. Conan Doyle 50 

66. In Her Earliest Youth. By Tasma 50 

67. The Lady Egeria. By J. B. Harwood 50 

68. A True Friend. By Adeline Sargent 50 

69. The Little Chatelaine. By The Earl of Desart- 50 

70. Children OP To-Morrow. By William Sharp 30 

71. The Haunted Fountain and Hetty’s Revenge. By Katharine S. 

Maequoid .r 30 

72. A Daughter’s Sacripice. Ey F. C. Philips and Percy Fendall 50 

73. Hauntings. By Vernon Lee 50 

74. A Smuggler’s Secret. By Frank Barrett 50 

75. Kestell op Greystone. By Esme Stuart 50 

76. The Talking Image op ITrur. By Franz Hartmann, M.T) 50 

77. A Scarlet Sin. By Florence Marryat 50 

78. By Order op the Czar. By Joseph Hatton 50 

79. The Sin op Joost Avelingh. By Maarten Maartens 50 

80. A Born Coquette. By The Duchess 50 

81. The Burnt Million. By James Payn ' 50 

82. A W'oman’s Heart. By Mrs. Alexander 50 

83. Syrlin. By Ouida 50 

84. The Rival Princes. By Justin McCarthy and Mrs. C. I’raed 50 

85. Blindfold. By Florence Marryatt 50 

86. 'I'liE Parting cp the Ways. By Betham Edwards 50 

87. The Failure op Elizabeth. By E. Frances Pojmter 50 

88. Eli’s Children. By George Manville Fenn 50 

89. The Bishop’s Bible. P v David Christie Murray and Henry Hermann.. 50 

90. April’s Lady. By The Duchess 50 

91. Violet Vyvian, M. F. H. By May Crommelin .50 

92. A Woman op the World. jBy F. Mabel Robinson 50 

93. The Baffled Conspirators. By W. E. Norris 50 

94. Strange Crimes. By William Westall ... 50 

9.5. Dishonoured. B.y Theo. Gift 50 

,-96. The Mystery OP M. Felix. By B. L. Far.] eon .50 

97. With Essex IN Ireland. By Hon. Emily Lawless .50 

98. Soldiers Three, AND Other Stories. By Rudyard Kipling 50 

99. Whose was the Hand. By M. E. Braddon 59 

100. The Blind Musician. By Stepniak and William Wt s all .50 

101. The House ( N T IE Scar. By Bertha Thomas 5G 

102. The Wages op Sin. By Lucas Malet 50 

103. The Phantom Rickshaw. By Rudyard Kipling 50 

104. The Love OP A Lady. By Annie 'rhomas .50 

105. How Came He Dead? By J. Fitzirerald Moll y 50 

106. A Romance op the Wire. By Mrs. Betham-Edwards .50 

107. A New Novel. By B. L. Farjeon .50 

108. Notes FROM THE News. By -lames Payn 50 

109. The Keeper op the Keys. By F. W. Robinson .50 


Any of the above sent postpaid, on receipt of price, by the publishers, 

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150 WORTH STREET, NEW YORK 




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